Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit introduces herself as an anarchist activist and a penniless author. She lives in a room in San Francisco, with no dependents or a regular job with set hours and salary, allowing her to write whenever she wishes. She states that "living at the bare minimum of your needs gives you a sense of freedom." She has been compared to Naomi Klein, although Solnit is clearly more radical, and to Susan Sontag, though she is less of an aesthete. An activist, journalist, and cultural historian, she has written seven successful essay collections, including "Motion Studies: Space and Eadweard Muybridge" and "Wanderlust: A History of Walking." She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lannan Literary Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.