Vicki Croke

VICKI CONSTANTINE CROKE is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author who reports on animal life, with a particular focus on the profound and transformative connections that are possible between humans and other creatures. She is the author of The New York Times Notable Book “Elephant Company,” which tells the heroic story of J.H. Williams and the elephants he led for the Allied Forces in WWII. His life-long work with elephants and dedication to them, he said, taught him to be a better man. Previous works include "The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American Explorer to Bring Back China’s Most Exotic Animal." It is the story of socialite Ruth Harkness who not only brought the first live giant panda out of China in 1936, but follows her lesser known, but even more important trek to return a captured young panda to the wild. It was a sacrifice she made believing that the animals belonged not in the hands of humans, but in their quiet forest home. Croke’s first book, praised by her hero, Jane Goodall, was "The Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos—Past, Present and Future." An exploration of the complicated issues of captivity, wildlife medicine, and management. A former news writer for CNN, she has been a featured contributor for NPR’s national newsmagazine show Here&Now, at WBUR, where her story on elephants earned both an Edward R. Murrow Award and a PRNDI (Public Radio News Directors Inc.) Award. Writing The Boston Globe’s “Animal Beat” column for thirteen years as a staffer, she continues to contribute to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in The London Sunday Telegraph, Time, Popular Science, O: The Oprah Magazine, Gourmet, National Wildlife, and Discover magazine, among others. Vicki has written a pilot for Disney, appeared as an animal expert on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, worked on documentary films including “Gorillas: Primal Contact” for A&E, and anchored NECN’s The Secret Life of Animals. She has traveled extensively, reporting from the field on elephants, polar bears, lions, owls, bald eagles, Tasmanian devils, and Madagascar’s top predator, the fossa, among many others. She is currently a Faculty Fellow at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Center for Animals and Public Policy. Her writing has been praised by the New York Times, the journal Nature, and The Economist; it has been optioned for film; and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Czech, and French. She is an incomplete human without an Irish wolfhound at her side and argues that her career has been one big excuse to be as close to as many animals as possible.