CANR
WORK TITLE: THE LIGHT EATERS
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.zoeschlanger.com
CITY: New York
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:New York University, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, writer. Freelance environmental journalist; Talking Points Memo, editor, 2013-14; Newsweek, senior staff writer, 2014-16; Quartz, staff environmental writer, 2017-19; Atlantic, staff writer, 2023–. Writer in residence at Mesa Refuge, CA, 2019; Strange Foundation, NY, 2020; Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, HI, Marble House Project, VT, and Bloedel Reserve, WA, 2021; and Oak Spring Garden Foundation, VA, 2022.
MEMBER:Society of Environmental Journalists.
AWARDS:Fellowships at Detroit River Institute, 2014, Vermont Law School, 2015, and University of Alaska–Fairbanks, 2016; Global Media Award for Best Article, Population Institute, 2015; Science Reporting Award, National Association of Science Writers, 2017; Honorable Mention, Society of Environmental Journalists Awards, 2020.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, Audubon, Fader, Fusion, New York Review of Books, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Village Voice, and Wired, and to NPR.
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]In her career as a journalist for the likes of Newsweek and Quartz, Zoë Schlanger has variously focused on environmental, health, and LGBT issues. She has won awards for features on population dynamics, contraception, and climate change in 2015 and on air pollution in Detroit in 2017. After enjoying a series of writer’s residencies, she joined the staff of the Atlantic in 2023.
Schlanger’s debut nonfiction book is The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. In writing this work of popular science, she took inspiration from Annie Dillard’s 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Therein, as Schlanger told Publishers Weekly, Dillard “did exactly the thing I most hoped to do, which was to make the ordinary woods appear uncanny and alien through close observation.” Schlanger was also inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks’s Oaxaca Journal, about a ferning expedition, and the sequencing of the first fern genome, the complexity of which attests to the organism’s intricacy. In The Light Eaters, Schlanger surveys experiments and studies that attest to the ways plants engage in activities reflecting a botanical style of intelligence. Diverse plants show adaptive abilities to communicate, remember things, and defend their lives. Recognizing that the scientific world has been resistant to arguments for plant intelligence ever since the New Age overreach of The Secret Life of Plants (1973), she uses interviews and firsthand accounts to establish the scientists’ credibility and convictions, alongside plant life’s creativity.
A writer for Kirkus Reviews hailed Schlanger’s debut as “thorough,” “provocative,” and “delightful.” Appreciating how the author’s “passion for the realm of plants … is consistent throughout this wondrous text,” the reviewer called The Light Eaters “that rare book that fascinates, challenges widely held assumptions, and enlightens in like measure.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2024, review of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth.
ONLINE
Atlantic Online, https://www.theatlantic.com/ (July 18, 2023), “Atlantic Hires Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger as Staff Writers”; (April 20, 2024), author profile.
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (March 15, 2024), Suzanne Shablovsky, “Botanical Brainiacs: PW Talks with Zoë Schlanger.”
Zoë Schlanger website, https://www.zoeschlanger.com (April 20, 2024).
Journalist covering science, health and the environment.
Staff writer at the Atlantic.
Author of The Light Eaters, a plant book, out with Harper Books May 7, 2024.
Finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award.
Winner of the 2017 National Association of Science Writers' science reporting award.
Into chemicals, climate, cool plants. Do say hello.
ow:
I'm a freelance environment reporter, currently working on THE LIGHT EATERS, a book about plants and the researchers who study them, which will be published by Harper Books.
I was a 2022 writer in residence at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in VA.
I was a 2021 writer in residence at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in HI, the Marble House Project in VT, and Bloedel Reserve in WA.
I was a 2020 writer in residence at The Strange Foundation in West Shokan, New York.
I was a 2019 writer in residence at Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes, California.
I was awarded first place honorable mention in the 2020 Society of Environmental Journalists awards for a feature in Audubon magazine about the global plastic trade and the phenomenon of pre-production plastic pellets washing into waterways long before they have a chance to become a product.
I was a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award, the Morley Safer Award for Outstanding Reporting, and the National Academies of Sciences Award for “Shallow Waters,” a series about how climate change and the dwindling Rio Grande is shaping life and politics at the Texas-Mexico border.
I received the 2017 National Association of Science Writer's Science Reporting Award for my Newsweek cover story, "Choking to Death in Detroit."
Previously:
Quartz, Staff environment reporter, January 2017-December 2019. I reported on climate change, environmental health, and science policy.
Freelance reporter, August 2016-January 2017, writing for publications like Wired, Fusion, and The Fader on climate, health, science, and LGBT issues. I was a regular contributor to the Village Voice, where I wrote about science and scientists in New York City.
Newsweek, Senior staff writer, February 2014-August 2016 • Wrote features and cover stories for the magazine on the health, science, environment, policy, and LGBT beats.
Recipient, Best Article 2015, The Population Institute’s 36th Global Media Awards, for Newsweek cover story on population dynamics, contraceptive access, and climate change
Fellow, University of Alaska Fairbanks Arctic Science Reporting fellowship, 2016
Fellow, Vermont Law School Summer Media Fellowship, 2015
Fellow, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resource’s 2014 Detroit River Institute
Member, Society of Environmental Journalists
Talking Points Memo, Front Page Editor, March 2013-February 2014
The Nation, Associate Editor of “Student Nation,” September 2012-March 2013; Factchecking intern, June 2012-August 2012
NYU Local, Editor-In-Chief, December 2011-May 2013
The Rachel Maddow Show, Intern, September 2012-December 2012
InsideClimate News, Research Intern, January 2012-May 2012
El País / The International Herald Tribune, Madrid, Spain Intern, February 2011-March 2011
Gothamist, Reporting Intern, March 2010-December 2011
Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
She previously covered the environment at Quartz and Newsweek. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, NPR, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award for coverage of air pollution in Detroit, and a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award for a series on water politics at the Texas-Mexico border. Her book, The Light Eaters, about the world of plant-behavior-and-intelligence research, will be published by HarperCollins in May 2024. At The Atlantic, she covers climate change.
The Atlantic Hires Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger as Staff Writers
Powell joins from The New York Times; Schlanger to cover climate and write The Weekly Planet newsletter
Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger
The Atlantic
JULY 18, 2023
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The journalists Michael Powell and Zoë Schlanger will join The Atlantic as staff writers, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced today. Michael has been a reporter at The New York Times since 2007, and will begin with The Atlantic next month. Zoë will start this fall, covering issues of climate and writing the newsletter The Weekly Planet, which tells the story of life on a changing planet.
In a note to staff, Jeff wrote: “Michael and Zoë are brilliant additions to our growing roster of staff writers. Michael is one of the preeminent reporters working today, and Zoë is a young journalist of exceptional promise. I am committed to providing our readers with the best journalism from the best writers, and Michael and Zoë will help us achieve this goal.”
At The New York Times, Michael covered presidential campaigns, reported on the economy, wrote the “Gotham” column for the Metro section, and for six years was the “Sports of the Times” columnist. Most recently, he was a national reporter covering issues around free speech and expression, and stories capturing intellectual and campus debate. He and two colleagues won the George Polk Award for reporting on a corrupt police detective—stories that led to more than a dozen exonerations, including freeing a man who had served 22 years for a murder he did not commit—and he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer for breaking-news reporting on Eliot Spitzer. Before joining the Times, Michael worked for The Washington Post from 1996 to 2006, where he covered the 2000 presidential campaign and later served as New York bureau chief.
Zoë is a distinguished science reporter and the author of a forthcoming book, The Light Eaters, about plant intelligence. She has contributed to The Atlantic, The New York Times, New York Review of Books, and Audubon magazine, among other publications. She was previously a staff reporter at Newsweek and later Quartz, reporting on climate change, the environment, health, and science policy. She has received several awards for her reporting, including for her coverage of the global plastic trade and air pollution in Detroit.
Other recent journalists to join The Atlantic are Hanna Rosin, as a senior editor and host of the Radio Atlantic podcast; the Pulitzer Prize winner Stephanie McCrummen as a staff writer, after nearly two decades at The Washington Post; and Laura Secor as a senior editor directing coverage of global issues and foreign policy. Laura was a features editor for The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, and previously a deputy editor at Foreign Affairs.
Zoë Schlanger is currently a staff reporter at the Atlantic, where she covers climate change. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Time, Newsweek, The Nation, Quartz, and on NPR among other major outlets, and is cited in the 2022 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. A recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers’ reporting award, she is often a guest speaker in schools and universities. Zoë graduated with a B.A. from New York University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Botanical Brainiacs: PW Talks with Zoë Schlanger
by Suzanne Shablovsky | Mar 15, 2024
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In The Light Eaters (Harper, May), Atlantic writer Schlanger delves into the scientific literature on plant intelligence.
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What were your literary inspirations for this book?
Robin Wall Kimmerer was a huge inspiration, as was Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I read early on in my writing career. She did exactly the thing I most hoped to do, which was to make the ordinary woods appear uncanny and alien through close observation. Another inspiration was Oliver Sacks’s Oaxaca Journal, essentially his diary from a “ferning” expedition to southern Mexico. Like me, he was obsessed with ferns.
When did you decide to write this?
I was covering climate change for a newsroom job, and I was becoming depressed and a bit disconnected from the material. My editor recognized that and said, “Go write about something else for a little while.” I started looking at botany journals because I’d always been intrigued by plants and thought of them as a source of calm. It just so happened that this was around the time the first fern genome had been sequenced. (Fern genomes are very large, and that’s why it took so long.) There was a photo of the fern, and it was so little, with these perfect scallops, and bright green. Ferns exist in every possible ecosystem. I was struck by the fact that this ancient, and what most people would think of as quite simplistic, organism had found a key to living well under any circumstance. Something about that steadfastness really captured me.
Do you think plants are intelligent?
At first, I was skeptical. The discoveries coming out of botany today are miraculous, but you can’t quite connect to them on a personal level because the way that the plants respond is sometimes invisible to our senses. Writing this book gave me a much broader sense of what intelligence should mean. When people hear the word intelligent, they hear everything humans have put on that word, but intelligence is something more fundamental. It’s cleverness, strategy, creativity. These are all things I’m completely convinced plants have. Plants are finely attuned to their environment in a way we can’t imagine because we have the gift of being able to move around. Think of a tree having to survive while rooted in place. That takes tremendous biological creativity!
What would be growing in your garden paradise?
I live in Brooklyn and want a garden so badly. I’d have huge squash vines. They look so ostentatious and ridiculous and bodily. They are the most creaturely plants. You can watch them climb over surfaces, strategize, make choices about how to get from A to Z. They twine in this beautiful way and are just very alive in a way that translates well to our perception of what living looks like.
A version of this article appeared in the 03/18/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Botanical Brainiacs
Schlanger, Zoë THE LIGHT EATERS Harper/HarperCollins (NonFiction None) $29.99 5, 7 ISBN: 9780063073852
Ambitious attempts to decode the manifest mysteries of plants.
Schlanger, a staff reporter at the Atlantic, has followed multiple veins of study on plant life to reveal remarkable discoveries and some potentially revolutionary conjectures. Her passion for the realm of plants--and what their lives tell us about our own--is consistent throughout this wondrous text. This is that rare book that fascinates, challenges widely held assumptions, and enlightens in like measure. The author doubtless considers the narrative an overview of current plant science (and its history) for general readers, notwithstanding the years invested in her own preparatory research, but it is hard to imagine a more thorough introduction or a writer more dedicated to her subject and provocative in the questions she asks. Schlanger chronicles her edifying interactions with dozens of scientists, describing numerous experiments. She also weighs the skepticism of botanists and biologists who think the study of intelligence in plants is folly. Many scientists, she notes, still recoil from the damage done to legitimate research by the largely spurious but immensely popular 1973 bookThe Secret Life of Plants, "a mix of real science, flimsy experiments, and unscientific projection." However, this reticence pales when held against new studies of the ways in which plants communicate, defend themselves, and remember, as well as the considerations of how biological systems can replicate across the spectrum of species. What is indisputable is that plants made animal life possible in the most fundamental way, transitioning the world's atmosphere from a toxic shroud of carbon dioxide to an oasis of oxygen. In this lovely book, the plant universe finds a human champion appreciative of its earthly role, concerned for its welfare, and amazed at its capacities.
A delightful work of popular science. You may never look at your houseplants or garden in quite the same way again.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Schlanger, Zoe: THE LIGHT EATERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784238298/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cc7e4553. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.