She is a contributing editor to Harper’s and frequent contributor to the political site. Rebecca has worked with climate change, antinuclear, and other issues as an activist and journalist. She has worked on environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s, notably with the Western Shoshone Defense Project in the early 1990s, as described in her book Savage Dreams: A Journey Into the Landscape Wars of the American West, and with antiwar activists throughout the Bush era. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, Rebecca credits her education in journalism and art criticism with strengthening her critical thinking skills and training her to quickly develop expertise in the great variety of subjects her books have covered. She then earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984, and began publishing work as an art critic. During that time, she also worked as a museum researcher. She returned to California and by the age of 19 finished her college education at San Francisco State University. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college.

Rebecca skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the GED exam. These include November 2010’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, a book of 22 maps and nearly 30 collaborators 2011’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, and many others, including Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics A Field Guide to Getting Lost Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities Wanderlust: A History of Walking As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. San Francisco writer Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books about art, landscape, public and collective life, ecology, politics, hope, meandering, reverie, and memory. About Author Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit.

Read Chavawn’s article, “ Laramie: A Gem City Atlas Reveals an Uncharted West” with image gallery, appearing in this issue. Editor’s Note: This interview with Rebecca Solnit follows from Chavawn Kelley’s participation in Laramie: A Gem City Atlas, which Rebecca led while a writer-in-residence at the University of Wyoming.

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