Rebecca Solnit

Puffin Foundation Fellow

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is a Puffin Foundation Fellow at Type Media Center and the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Her books include “Orwell’s Roses,” as well as “Recollections of My Nonexistence;” “Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me;” and “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.” A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school (at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism), she writes regularly for The Guardian and LitHub, and serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International.

http://rebeccasolnit.net/

Books

Orwell's Roses

“In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” So be-gins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power.

Recollections of My Nonexistence

In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas

Highlights

US companies push guns as blithely and murderously as they once did tobacco

Type Media Center fellow Rebecca Solnit discusses the significant role of firearms in suicide rates, particularly among white men.

Dianne Feinstein should be remembered for her full range of positions: good and bad

Type Media Center fellow Rebecca Solnit reflects on the complicated nature of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s political career, after her death.

The Case for Hope, With Rebecca Solnit (The Science of Happiness Podcast)

In the first episode in The Science of Happiness Podcast‘s series Climate, Hope and Science, they explore how embracing uncertainty enables us to move beyond climate anxiety and despair to hope and action, with author and activist Rebecca Solnit.

Humanity can’t equivocate any longer. This is a climate emergency

The climate emergency has been declared over and over. The future the scientists warned us about is here, now

‘A truce with the trees’: Rebecca Solnit on the wonders of a 300-year old violin

Made with all-renewable materials, this violin from 1721 reflects a time of magnificent culture – a global gathering from before the climate crisis.

Women’s rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our side

You can take away a right through legal means, but it is harder to take away the belief in that right. The uproar over the court’s hideous abortion decision is a reminder of how unpopular it is.

US mass shootings will continue until the majority can overrule the minority

Guns symbolize the power of a minority over the majority, and they’ve become the icons of a party that has become a cult seeking minority power.

Here’s how Americans can fight back to protect abortion rights

A Democratic majority in both houses of Congress could make abortion a right by law, and it’s worth remembering Mexico, Ireland and Argentina are among the countries that recently did so.

Republicans are laying a path back to power – and paving it with lies

Despite having fled the mob on 6 January, many congressmen are openly fleeing the truth about what happened that day.

How Buddhism has changed the west for the better

We are not who we were very long ago. A lot of new ideas have emerged from Buddhism and other traditions emphasizing compassion, equality, nonviolence and critical perspectives on materialism and capitalism.

Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming

The American right might win the occasional battle – but they will never win the war against progress.