Nina Burleigh

Nina Burleigh is a New York Times best-selling author of seven acclaimed works of creative nonfiction. Her debut novel, Zero Visibility Possible, is a dark satire about disinformation and the media - the first in a planned trilogy about how aspects of the current dystopia affect inner lives. Most of her books share a theme of examining the tension between belief and science, religion and rationality in post-Enlightenment life, including 1830s American politics, among post-revolutionary French scientists in Egypt, Cold War era CIA conspiracy theories, fake Biblical archaeology in Jerusalem today, and the role of faith versus science in an Italian courtroom. Two of her books explore the relationship between art, nature, history, and science. In Mirage, she told the story of the scientists and artists behind the first great study of modern Islam and ancient Egypt, Description de l'Egypte, a landmark work of art and publishing produced by the scientists who went to Egypt with Napoleon in 1800. Her book Unholy Business is a Maltese Falcon style crime caper about a gang of forgers accused of applying new technology to alter and sell archaeological relics. VIRUS, five essays on the pandemic, was one of the first books on the pandemic to explore conspiracy and disinformation about the vaccine. Her 2018 book, The Trump Women: Part of the Deal, was covered in The New York Times, New York Post, Entertainment Tonight, BBC, MSNBC, Yahoo and many other media outlets A contributing editor at The New Republic, she has published hundreds of works of journalism, essays and book reviews, on a wide array of topics including culture, politics, gender issues, science, and the environment in numerous publications including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Business Insider, the Washington Post, People, Slate and Bustle. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, The Today Show, 48 Hours, MSNBC, CNN and C-Span, on NPR and numerous radio programs and podcasts. She executive-produced a three-part documentary on Jeffrey Epstein's comrade Ghislaine Maxwell, streaming on Peacock. And she writes a weekly newsletter on politics called American Freakshow. A fellow of the Explorers Club, she has covered stories on six continents. She has published works about the Arctic and the Antarctic, the Amazon, where she wrote an essay about women, nature, and the human culture along the Amazon River in Peru and ayahuasca culture in Iquitos, posh Lagos, racism and rhino poaching in South Africa. Domestically, she has written cover stories on national politics, political big data mining, the #metoo movement, sea level rise in Florida, asteroid defense schemes and other current events. Adjunct professor at the Arthur L. Carter Graduate Journalism Institute at NYU, she has judged the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards for nonfiction, and won several awards for her journalism and books. She was writer in residence at the Siena Art Institute in 2013 attached to the Above/Below Ground project with Mark Dion and Amy Yoes, including a symposium on the Art and Science of The Expedition. She was a Dora Maar Fellow in the arts in Menerbes, France, in 2014, where she worked on a novel. Mirage was selected by The New York Times as an editors' choice and won the Society of Women Educators' Award. Nina was born and educated in the Midwest, has been based in Washington, D.C., New York, and Paris, and has traveled and reported extensively in the Middle East and lived in Italy and France. She has been an adjunct professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, university lecturer in U.S. politics at University of Agder in Norway, and has lectured around the United States, in Italy, and in Mexico.