Alex Shoumatoff

Alex Shoumatoff

Alexander "Alex" Shoumatoff (born November 4, 1946) is an American writer known for his literary journalism, nature and environmental writing, and books and magazine pieces about political and environmental situations and world affairs. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine from 1978 to 1987, a founding contributing editor of Outside magazine and Condé Nast Traveler, and is a senior contributing editor to Vanity Fair, his main outlet since 1986. He is known for reporting on some of the most remote corners of the world.

He has 10 published books and since 2001 has been the editor of a web site, DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com, devoted to "documenting and raising awareness about the planet's rapidly disappearing natural and cultural diversity." Hundreds of pages of his writing are posted on the site. Career highlights include an article he wrote about the mountain gorilla advocate Dian Fossey, which eventually became the film Gorillas in the Mist. Shoumatoff was recently called "the greatest writer in America" by Donald Trump and was also recently called "one of our greatest story tellers" by Graydon Carter, the editor in chief at Vanity Fair. Shoumatoff may be, arguably, the most widely traveled magazine journalist with the broadest range in subject matter writing in English.