American · b. 1961
Rebecca Solnit is an American writer, historian, and activist known for wide-ranging, erudite essays on landscape, politics, hope, and feminism, author of Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and Men Explain Things to Me.
Rebecca Solnit is one of the most admired essayists and cultural critics of her generation, the author of more than twenty books on subjects ranging from walking and landscape to disaster, hope, art, and gender. Her discursive, erudite, beautifully written essays move freely across history, philosophy, politics, and personal reflection.
Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000) established her gift for finding profound meaning in everyday subjects, while A Field Guide to Getting Lost explored uncertainty and the unknown. Her essay Men Explain Things to Me helped popularize the concept that became known as “mansplaining” and made her a central voice in contemporary feminism. Hope in the Dark has become a touchstone for activists.
Solnit is celebrated for her intellectual range, her graceful prose, and her ability to connect the personal, the political, and the philosophical in ways that illuminate the world.
by Rebecca Solnit
A series of linked essays on the value of getting lost — geographically, psychologically, historically. Solnit ranges across landscape, memory, art, and personal experience to argue that losing one's way is not a failure but a condition for discovery.
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by Rebecca Solnit
Seven essays on sexism, language, and power — anchored by the title essay, which coined the term 'mansplaining' (though Solnit never uses the word), and ranging to cover the epidemic of violence against women, Virginia Woolf's relationship to the sea, and the politics of silence.
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by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit's wide-ranging history and philosophy of walking. From peripatetic philosophers and Romantic poets to pilgrims, protesters, and flâneurs, Solnit explores how walking has shaped thought, culture, politics, and the body — a discursive, erudite meditation on putting one foot in front of the other.
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