Who We Are

David PlotzDavid Plotz is editor of Slate. Before joining the magazine in 1996, Plotz was a senior editor and staff writer for the Washington City Paper. Plotz has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Rolling Stone, GQ, the New Republic, and the Washington Post, among other publications. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank and, most recently, Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible, based on his "Blogging the Bible" series for Slate.

John Alderman is general manager of the Slate Group and publisher of Slate. Previously, Alderman has served as vice president of business development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and vice president of business and product development at the Away Network. Prior to these roles, he served in various editorial and business development roles at Outside magazine. Alderman serves on the board of Grist, a Seattle-based nonprofit Web site that focuses on environmental news and commentary. He received his MBA at Columbia Business School and undergraduate degree from Harvard College.

Jacob Weisberg Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, a unit of the Washington Post Co. devoted to developing Web-based publications. Weisberg joined Slate shortly after its founding in 1996 as chief political correspondent. He succeeded Michael Kinsley to become Slate's second editor from 2002 until 2008, when he handed the job over to David Plotz. Before joining Slate, Weisberg wrote about politics for magazines including the New Republic, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, The Bush Tragedy, was a New York Times bestseller in 2008. He is the co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of In an Uncertain World (2003). He is also the author of the 1996 book In Defense of Government, the 2000 eBook The Road to Chadville, and the Bushisms series.

Staff and Contributor Biographies

Michael Agger is a senior editor at Slate. He writes "The Browser" column.

Holly Allen is a Slate Web designer. Before joining Slate, she worked as an interactive designer for weather.com and as a design manager for washingtonpost.com. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Georgia. Holly lives in Atlanta with her husband, Tripper, and their golden retriever, Ed.

Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate and co-editor of DoubleX, Slate's section for women. She edits the magazine's legal columns ("Jurisprudence") and writes about law and family. She is also the Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Before joining Slate, she worked as an editor and writer at Legal Affairs magazine and as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1^st Circuit. Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, O Magazine, and Mother Jones, among other publications. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

Christopher Beam is a political reporter for Slate. His e-mail is .

Christopher Benfey is an art critic for Slate. He is the author of The Double Life of Stephen Crane, Degas in New Orleans, and The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan. He is Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, where he specializes in American literature. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, TLS, and the New York Times Book Review.

Andy Bowers is the editor of Slate's video magazine, Slate V. He also oversees the magazine's radio and podcasting projects. Before joining Slate, he was a longtime correspondent and producer for National Public Radio; among other postings, he served as NPR's bureau chief in both London and Moscow and covered the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. He is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Los Angeles.

Emily Calderone is a video producer for Slate V. Before joining Slate, she worked as a video editor and shooter for Sprig.com in New York. She got her start working in post-production with the Coen Brothers and later on films at Twentieth Century Fox. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz and currently lives in Hollywood, Calif.

Dan Check is director of technology at The Slate Group. Before joining Slate, he managed the data warehouse at Catalist, a political data vendor. He is a graduate of Pomona College and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent. Previously, he worked for Time magazine in New York and Washington, finishing his stint as a White House correspondent. He is the author of On Her Trail, a biography of his late mother, the television newscaster Nancy Dickerson. He graduated from the University of Virginia. He can be reached at .

Maggie Dietz is Slate's assistant poetry editor. Her first book of poems is Perennial Fall.

Matt Dodson is a Slate Web developer and Flash guru. He is a D.C. native and worked as a consultant in the area for seven years before joining Slate. Matt has worked with some of the country's leading I.T. companies including Cisco Systems and Ricoh Corp. and focused primarily on nonprofit organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Freedom House, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. His favorite color is green.

Rob Donnelly began illustrating for Slate early in 2006. His work has been featured in American Illustration and the Society of Illustrators. Rob is also a regular contributor for the artists' collective Meathaus Comics. He lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Daniel Engber writes about science, culture, and sports for Slate and edits the Science and Explainer columns. He has a graduate degree in neuroscience and has worked in research labs at Columbia, UCSF, and the National Institutes of Health.

Julia Felsenthal is Slate's executive assistant. She is a native of Chicago and a graduate of Yale University.

Nina Frenkel has been illustrating for Slate since 1996, when she got her start doing editorial work. She has a B.A. in studio art from Carleton College and has studied at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and advertisements. She recently illustrated a book for Starbucks.

Bonnie Goldstein is a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and investigative producer for ABC News. E-mail her at .

Katherine Goldstein is the Innovations Editor at Slate, involved in site-wide innovations related to social media, traffic, and new editorial technology. Before joining Slate in 2010, she was an associate blog editor and the green editor at the Huffington Post. She graduated from Vassar College and lives in Brooklyn.

Laura Graham is director of product management and strategy at the Slate Group. Before joining Slate, she worked in product management and business development at ARPU, a performance ad network, and Revolution Health Group, a consumer health Web site. Laura received her MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management and has a BA from the University of Chicago.

David Greenberg writes Slate's "History Lesson" column and other occasional features. Previously, he worked as an editor of Slate's culture section. Now a professor at Rutgers University, he received his Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University in May 2001. He has served as acting editor and managing editor of the New Republic and has written for, among other publications, the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic Monthly, and Foreign Affairs. His first book, Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image won the Washington Monthly's Annual Political Book Award for 2003. He lives in New York City.

Jessica Grose is a Slate associate editor and managing editor of DoubleX, Slate's section for women. She was previously an editor at Jezebel.com. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Women's Health, and Marie Claire, among other publications. She is the co-author of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages From Home and a graduate of Brown University.

Nathan Heller is a Slate copy editor. He also writes the magazine's "Assessment" column. He grew up in San Francisco, graduated from Harvard, and has written for Bookforum, n+1, and other magazines.

Ann Hulbert, Slate's books editor, also writes the "Sandbox" column. She is the author most recently of Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children, as well as of The Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford. A longtime editor and writer at the New Republic, she is now a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, TLS, and elsewhere.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate as well as occasional pieces on culture and consumer electronics. He is the author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed (2009), Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (2008) and The Wizards of Armageddon (1983), as well as a former staff reporter for the Boston Globe, having been its military correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, and New York bureau chief. A regular writer on jazz and hi-fi for Stereophile, he has also written on a variety of subjects for the New York Times, New York Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and others. He is currently a 2011 Schwartz senior fellow with the New America Foundation. A long time ago, he was the foreign and defense policy adviser to Rep. Les Aspin. He graduated from Oberlin College and has a Ph.D. in political science from MIT. He lives in Brooklyn.

Steven E. Landsburg writes "Everyday Economics" for Slate and is the author, most recently, of More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics.

Juliet Lapidos is a Slate associate editor and the deputy books editor. She edits the "Food," "Drink," "Faith-Based," "Shopping," and "Explainer" columns and oversees the "Audio Book Club" podcast. She also writes frequently for the magazine.

Rachael Larimore is Slate's managing editor. A graduate of Ohio University's journalism school, she was a sportswriter for various newspapers and Web sites before coming to Slate.

Josh Levin, a senior editor in Slate's Washington, D.C., office, edits the sports and technology sections. Before coming to Slate, he wrote for the Washington City Paper. Levin, a native of New Orleans, graduated from Brown University.

Dahlia Lithwick is a senior editor at Slate. She writes "Supreme Court Dispatches" and has covered the Microsoft trial and other legal issues for Slate. Before joining Slate as a free-lancer in 1999, she worked for a family law firm in Reno, Nev. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Elle, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Washington Post. She is co-author of Me v. Everybody: Absurd Contracts for an Absurd World, a legal humor book. She is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School.

Lowen Liu is a Slate copy editor. He grew up in California and has degrees from Stanford and the University of Michigan.

Chad Lorenz is Slate's home page editor. A graduate of the University of Nebraska, he previously worked at the Washingtonian magazine and the Washington Post.

Annie Lowrey reports on economics and business for Slate. Previously, she worked as a staff writer for the Washington Independent and on the editorial staffs of Foreign Policy and The New Yorker. Her e-mail is .

Melonyce McAfee is a Slate copy editor. She also edits the site's "Dear Prudence" column. She landed an editorial assistant position at Slate after working as a community news writer at the San Diego Union-Tribune. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate's critic-at-large and writes the "Dilettante" column. He is working on a book about the 1980s. He lives in Brooklyn.

Heather Murphy is Slate's photo editor, creating slide shows on a wide array of topics. She got her start in journalism at the Santiago Times in Chile. Later, she went on to produce and edit content for NPR.org, Washingtonpost.com, and MSNBC. Originally from San Francisco, she now lives in New York.

Robert Neubecker graduated from Parsons School of Design and has worked as an illustrator for 30 years. He has drawn for nearly everything in print, notably the New York Times, Time, and Business Week. He is currently a regular contributor to Slate and has won many awards from American Illustration, Print, Communication Arts, and the Society of Illustrators. Hes' the author of Wow! City!, a children's book. Robert lives in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah with his wife, Ruth, and their two daughters, Isabel and Josephine.

Michael Newman is Slate's politics editor. He previously worked as an editor and writer in the opinions sections of the Washington Post's Web site, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.

Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Previously, he was an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal, and an editor of the Washington Monthly.

Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's culture critic and an advisory editor (and was the magazine's culture editor from 2002-2006). Before joining the magazine, she worked as an editor at The New Yorker. She is the author of Halflife, a book of poems, and her writing and poetry have appeared in Slate, The New Yorker, The Nation, the New Republic, the New York Times, Best American Poetry, and other publications. A graduate of Yale University, she holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. She lives in Brooklyn, where she grew up.

Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic. He also writes the movies column for Spin and contributes to publications including the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Men's Vogue. At Princeton, he was an editor of the Nassau Weekly.

Robert Pinsky is Slate's poetry editor. His most recent book of poems is Jersey Rain. He is a contributor to PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer and from 1997-2000 was U.S. poet laureate.

Lucinda Rosenfeld writes Slate's "Friend or Foe" advice column. She is the author of three novels—most recently, I'm So Happy for You, which is about competitive best friends. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Creative Non-Fiction, Glamour, and the New York Times. She's currently writing a book about three sisters. She can be reached at .

Hanna Rosin is a founding editor of Slate's DoubleX. She splits her time writing longer stories for the Atlantic and shorter ones for Slate. She got her start in journalism at the New Republic writing contrarian essays and more recently worked at the Washington Post, doing straight reporting, mostly on politics and religion. She has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, and GQ, and appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. She was born in Israel, grew up in Queens, N.Y., and went to Stanford University. She now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Slate Editor David Plotz, and their three children. She is the author of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission To Save the Nation, and she is currently working on a book based on her recent Atlantic story, "The End of Men."

William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent. He writes about science, technology, politics, and society. He is the author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, which argues that pro-choice and pro-life activists have lost the abortion debate to a third constituency: libertarian conservatives.

Amanda Schaffer writes on science, medicine and health for Slate. Previously, she worked at Mount Sinai Medical Center and taught in the chemistry department at NYU. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, Boston Review, Ploughshares, JAMA, and the New York Times. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in history of science.

Chris Schieffer is the Slate Group's project manager. He manages the requirements gathering process and implementation of all software development-impacting projects on Slate and The Root. Before joining The Slate Group, he was a project manager at Symantec. Originally from Delaware, he graduated from American University and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Vivian Selbo is the design director of Slate. Before joining Slate, she was an independent Web site developer, creating sites and Web works for clients such as MoMA, SFMoMA, the Walker Art Center, Cal Art's Center for Integrated Media, the Visual Arts Dept. at UCSD, PBS/POV, Visual Understanding in Education, and Eyebeam, among others. She began working online as the interface director of the multiple-award-winning site adaweb.com, now part of the Walker Art Center's permanent collection. Her art work is included in the collections of the Walker Art Center and SFMoMA. She has taught at the School of Visual Arts, the Banff Center for the Arts, and at New York University. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

Jack Shafer is a Slate editor at large. He edited two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly, before joining Slate prior to its 1996 launch. Shafer has written on new media, the press, and drug policy for publications big (New York Times Magazine) and small (Inquiry). His "Press Box" column appears several times a week in Slate.

Blaine Sheldon is a Slate Group product manager. Before joining the group, he was formerly a Web producer at ForeignPolicy.com, working to relaunch its site in 2009. Blaine is an active follower of emerging Web trends and Latin American affairs. His personal blog, Ojo Gringo, covers both topics and his frequent visits to the region. He hails from the greater Seattle area and is a graduate of political science from Washington State University.

Jeremy Singer-Vine is an assistant editor for Slate. He develops data-driven editorial projects and edits the "Green Lantern" and "Green Room" columns. Previously, he wrote the Wall Street Journal's "Research Report" column. His e-mail address is .

Bill Smee is the executive producer of Slate V. He joined Slate after 20 years in television news and documentary, having garnered multiple Emmys as a producer and network executive at CNN and the Discovery Times Channel. He is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Washington, D.C.

Sydney Spiesel writes for Slate's "Medical Examiner" column and appears regularly on NPR's Day to Day. He is a practicing pediatrician in Woodbridge, Conn., and an immunologist, and he teaches pediatrics as a clinical professor at Yale's School of Medicine. A graduate of Shimer College, he holds a Ph.D. and an M.D. from Yale University and has worked as a public health microbiologist, a software developer, and a museum designer. Dr. Spiesel also appears in a question in the game Trivial Pursuit.

Jeremy Stahl is Slate's social media editor. Before joining Slate, he worked as a sports editor at Yahoo! U.K. in London and as a contributor for the Riviera Times in Nice, France.

Seth Stevenson is a frequent Slate contributor, writing on topics that include advertising, travel, shopping, and pop culture. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, New York Magazine, the Best American Travel Writing series, and other publications. He is the author of the travel book Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World. Raised in Brookline, Mass., Stevenson graduated from Brown University and lives in Washington, D.C.

Mark Alan Stamaty has been a regular contributor to Slate since its inception. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, GQ, Esquire, etc. He is the creator of numerous comic strips: MacDoodle St., Washingtoon, Doodlennium, Boox, and others. He is the author-illustrator of 10 books, among them, the cult classic Who Needs Donuts? His newest book is Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq.

Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic. Previously, she wrote the Slate television and pop-culture column "Surfergirl" for two years. She has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post Book World, Bookforum, and the Atlantic. She has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC-Berkeley and lives in Brooklyn.

John Swansburg is Slate's culture editor. Before joining Slate, he was the deputy editor of the Boston Globe Ideas section and a senior editor at Legal Affairs magazine. His writing has appeared in the Globe, the New York Times, and other places.

Ellen Tarlin is a Slate copy editor. Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Brooklyn Bridge, and Bark magazine.

June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. Before joining the magazine, she was an editor and foreign rights manager at Seal Press and managing editor of Women in Translation, a publishing company specializing in women's writing from around the world. She was born and raised in Manchester, England.

Julia Turner is Slate's deputy editor. Working from Slate's New York office, she edits the "Spectator," "Doonan," and "Transport" columns as well as pieces on advertising, fashion, culture, media, and design. She also writes regularly for the magazine about design and appears on Slate's weekly Culture Gabfest podcast. Before joining Slate, she worked at Time Inc.—first in magazine development and later at Sports Illustrated Women.

Josh Voorhees is the editor of The Slatest. Before joining Slate, he reported on politics and policy for Politico and Greenwire. He is a native of western New York, a graduate of Davidson College, and a current resident of Washington, D.C. E-mail him at [email protected].

Jonah Weiner is a pop critic for Slate. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and Blender, where he was a senior editor.

Elizabeth Weingarten is a Slate editorial assistant. A native of the Chicago suburbs and a graduate of Northwestern University, she has previously worked as a Web producer at the Atlantic and as a reporter for Qatar Today magazine in Doha, Qatar.

Forrest Wickman is a Slate editorial assistant and the intern with the Culture Gabfest. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in New York.

Chris Wilson is a Slate associate editor in Washington, D.C. He is a native of Charlottesville, Va., and a graduate of the University of Virginia. He previously worked at U.S. News & World Report and Congressional Quarterly.

Emily Yoffe writes Slate's "Dear Prudence" column, answering question on life, love, overbearing in-laws, and gaseous cubicle mates. She also writes Slate's "Human Guinea Pig" column, in which she tries things readers have too much dignity to do themselves (entering the Mrs. America Contest, making her singing debut). She is author of the book What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner.

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