Slate's staff.

David 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.

Matt Turck is general manager of the Slate Group and publisher of Slate. Prior to joining Slate in 2009, Matt was with Time Incorporated, where he held several positions, including publisher of This Old House, overseeing all operations, and associate publisher of Time magazine where he was responsible for North American sales and marketing. A native of Michigan and graduate of Michigan State University, he lives with his wife, two children, and more pets than he wants to admit, in Westchester, N.Y.

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

Holly Allen is a Slate 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.

L.V. Anderson is a Slate assistant editor. She edits Slate's food and drink sections and writes Brow Beat's recipe column, "You're Doing It Wrong."

Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate. She edits the magazine's legal column ("Jurisprudence") and writes about law and family. She is writing a book about bullying called Sticks and Stones: The New Problem of Bullying and How To Solve It, to be published by Random House in early spring. Emily 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. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

Allison Benedikt is the managing editor of Slate's Double X. Previously she was the film editor for the Village Voice, and has been a writer and editor at the Chicago Tribune and Brill’s Content. She’s a native of Youngstown, Ohio, graduated from the University of Michigan, and lives in Brooklyn.

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.

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. He is also the political director for CBS News. 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 slatepolitics@gmail.com.

William J. Dobson is the politics and foreign affairs editor at Slate. Previously, he was an editor at Foreign Policy, Newsweek International, and Foreign Affairs. He has written on international politics for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the New Republic, and others. He is also the author of The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and Harvard Law School, and holds a masters degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University.

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. He has a graduate degree in neuroscience and has worked in research labs at Columbia, UCSF, and the National Institutes of Health.

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.

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.

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.

David Haglund is the editor of Brow Beat, Slate's culture blog. Previously he was the managing editor of PEN America. He has taught literature and writing at Harvard, Oxford, and Hunter College and serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

Aisha Harris is a Brow Beat assitant. She is a graduate student at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Nathan Heller writes the magazine's "Assessment" column. He grew up in San Francisco, graduated from Harvard, and has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, n+1, and elsewhere.

Laura Helmuth is Slate’s science and health editor, based in Slate’s Washington, D.C., office. She also edits the “Explainer” column. Previously, she worked for Smithsonian and Science magazines. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from UC-Berkeley. 

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate as well as occasional pieces on culture and consumer electronics. He is the author of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (forthcoming, Feb. 2013), 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. 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.

Chris Kirk is the interactives editor of Slate. Before joining Slate, he worked at Yahoo. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in Washington, D.C.

Dan Kois is a senior editor in Slate's culture section. He edits and writes stories about books, TV, movies, sports, music, theater—you know, whatever. He is also a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and was the founding editor of New York's Vulture blog. He also wrote a book about the Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole called Facing Future. Before all that, he was a film development executive and a literary agent. He lives in Arlington, Va.

Miriam Krule is a Slate copy editor and edits Slate's religion column "Faith-Based." She has written, edited, and produced for Tablet Magazine, TheAtlantic.com, and NPR.org.

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

Josh Levin is Slate's executive editor. Working from Slate's Washington, D.C., office, he edits the sports and technology sections and hosts the sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen." 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 and edits the Dear Prudence column.

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.

J. Bryan Lowder is Slate’s editorial assistant for culture. He writes for Browbeat and XX Factor.

Natalie Matthews-Ramo is a Web and interactive designer for Slate. She is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design.

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.

Andrew Morgan is a Slate designer. He is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and lives in Baltimore.

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. He’s the author of the Wow! children's books series. Robert lives in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah with his wife, Ruth, and their two daughters, Isabel and Josephine.

Will Oremus is a Slate staff writer and Future Tense blogger, reporting on emerging technologies, tech policy, and digital culture. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia Journalism School, he has previously written for the Bay Area News Group, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the New Yorker online. Email him at will.oremus@slate.com.

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 Selected Poems. He is a contributor to PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer and from 1997-2000 was U.S. poet laureate.

Charlie Powell has been contributing illustrations to Slate since 1996. He graduated from the California College of the Arts and has been an illustrator for 20 years. His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He recently illustrated a book for Scholastic, published in 2007. He lives in the mountains near Santa Cruz, Calif., with his wife, Jessica; daughter, Corrina; and son, Owen.

Jody Rosen is Slate's music critic. He is the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and The Nation.

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 website 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.

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.

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.

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.

Rebekah Stout is Slate's assistant poetry editor. She also works as the Programs Director of the Favorite Poem Project, the poetry editor of 236, and is a lecturer in poetry at Boston University.

John Swansburg is Slate's editorial director. 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 Slate's copy chief and "Clean Plate" blogger. Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Brooklyn Bridge, and Bark magazine, as well as on Slate and the RISK storytelling podcast.

June Thomas writes about culture for Slate. She previously was 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.

Sarah Trankle is an assistant at Slate. She is a graduate of Colby College and lives in New York.

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 josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Katy Waldman is a Slate assistant editor. She graduated from Yale University and lives in Washington, D.C. 

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.

Forrest Wickman is a Slate staff writer. He writes for Explainer and Brow Beat and lives in New York.

Megan Wiegand is a Slate copy editor. She is a graduate of Ohio State University and the Missouri School of Journalism.

Matthew Yglesias is Slate's business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect. His first book, Heads in the Sand, was published in 2008. His second, The Rent Is Too Damn High, will be published March 2012.

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.