Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit Historian, author and activist
will accept an honorary degree at RISD Commencement.

Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books, a historian and an activist. Rebecca Solnit writes about art, politics, community, landscapes, ecology, memory and the environment, among other interests. Her work traces thematic junctions in art and cultural history, showing how people work to maintain a sense of connection to place and each other in an often anonymous, fragmented and fast-paced modern world.

Solnit’s latest book, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (2010), visually charts the diverse cultural geography and history of San Francisco through 22 complex maps. Among her other better known works are: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (2010), A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2006), Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2005) and Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001).

Solnit won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (2004). She has also earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award, is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and writes for the political site TomDispatch.com.