Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic, and the host and co-creator of narrative podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week. For years, Newkirk has covered voting rights, democracy, and environmental justice, with a focus on how race and class shape the country's and the world's fundamental structures, in print and audio. Newkirk was a 2022 Andrew Carnegie fellow, and was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors's ASME Next Award. In 2021, Newkirk received the Peabody Award for Floodlines. In 2024, Newkirk was named Journalist of the Year by the Washington Association of Black Journalists.
Select Work:
- The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms. (September 2019 cover article in the Atlantic)
- Climate Change Is Already Damaging American Democracy: A look at the intersection of politics, poverty, race, and the potential rise of autocracy in America's coming climate regime. (The Atlantic, 2018)
- Cape Town Is an Omen: A feature for the Atlantic on the 2018 "Day Zero" water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, and its role as a harbinger of global political conflict over water in a warmer future. (The Atlantic, 2018)
