Penguin Speakers Bureau

Michelle Goldberg is a peripatetic journalist and author who has always been fascinated by the intersection of ideology, sex, and politics. Her first book, The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (W.W. Norton), delved into some of the reddest precincts of the United States to expose the ascendant politico-religious fundamentalism dominating the Republican Party and, at the time, the Bush administration. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “an impressive piece of lucid journalism…carefully researched and riveting.” It was a finalist for the 2007 New York Pubic Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism.

After Kingdom Coming was released, Goldberg spent the next two years traveling the globe to research The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, which Penguin Press published in April 2009. Reported from four continents, The Means of Reproduction is about the international battle over reproductive rights. Women’s freedom, Goldberg argues, is key to addressing both overpopulation and rapid population decline, helping the Third World climb out of poverty and retarding the spread of AIDS. Yet attempts to improve women’s status and give them greater control over their own bodies elicits fierce opposition from conservatives who see women’s submission as key to their own identity. In 2008, The Means of Reproduction won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. The judges described it as “a book of vaulting ambition and intellectual passion. Michelle Goldberg looks at literally the entire world through the prism of women’s issues and women’s rights. From abortion to female circumcision, from sexual trafficking to abstinence-only programs, from Poland to Ethiopia to Nicaragua, she examines the conflict between self-determination and patriarchal tradition.”

Before she started writing books, Goldberg was a senior writer for Salon.com. Her work has also appeared in Glamour, Rolling Stone, The Nation, New York Magazine, The Guardian (UK), and The New Republic, where she has a blog. She has reported from countries including Uganda, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, India, and Argentina, and has been a featured public speaker all over the United States, as well as in London and Amsterdam. When she’s not on the road, she spends as much time as possible in her Cobble Hill, Brooklyn neighborhood with her husband, Matthew Ipcar.

Learn more about this speaker

Michelle Golberg on the GOP's Abortion Bill
The Daily Beast

"Sex, Power, Women And 'The Future Of the World'"
NPR's "Fresh Air"

"Christy Turlington's Labor of Love"
The Daily Beast

"Palin and the Christian Right"
The Nation

"3 A.M. For Feminism"
The New Republic

"Abortion rights go global"
Slate magazine

"Ending the Compromise Era on AIDS"
The American Prospect

Michelle Goldberg's Articles for Salon
Salon

Michelle Goldberg's Articles for The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast