Vann R. Newkirk II, 2020 11th Hour Fellow, is a senior editor at the Atlantic. He has covered the battles for voting rights since the 2013 Shelby County Supreme Court decision, the fate of communities on the front lines of climate change and disasters, the Black vote in the 2018 and 2020 elections, and wrote the September 2019 cover story for the Atlantic on black land loss. He is the host of the Atlantic's podcast Floodlines, a narrative series about Hurricane Katrina. His forthcoming book, Children of the Flood, a chronicle of Black America's fight against climate crises, will be published by Random House.
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)
