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 is 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.
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)
