about
"Engrave this upon your heart: there isn't anyone you couldn't love once you heard their story." —Mary Lou Kownacki
Courtney E. Martin is a writer, teacher, and speaker, living in Brooklyn.
This fall, Beacon Press will publish her next book, DO IT ANYWAY: The Next Generation of Activists, in which Courtney profiles eight people under 35 trying to make change. In the spring, Seal Press will publish her first anthology, co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan, entitled CLICK: When We Knew We Were Feminists.
Courtney’s first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women was awarded a Books for a Better Life nomination and led her to speak at colleges and universities across the nation.
She is also a widely-read freelance journalist and editor at Feministing.com—the most widely read feminist publication in the world. She is a Senior Correspondent for The American Prospect Online and her work has appeared in the Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, Glamour, and a variety of anthologies, among other publications. Courtney also co-wrote the life story of AIDS activist Marvelyn Brown, called The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive, which is currently being turned into a feature film.
In addition, Courtney consults with social justice organizations throughout the nation, including the Ms. Foundation for Women, the National Council for Research on Women, the Women’s Funding Network, The Op-Ed Project, The Women's Therapy Centre Institute, and the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict. She contributed to the Shriver Report, released by the Center for American Progress last fall.
Courtney has been on Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, the O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and MSNBC, among other major media outlets. She is part of the Progressive Women’s Voices program at the Women’s Media Center and was recently in the final three for the Washington Post’s Next Great American Pundit Contest.
She was awarded the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Courtney has an M.A. from the Gallatin School at New York University in writing and social change and a B.A. from Barnard College in political science and sociology. Courtney also founded The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy.
When she isn’t working, which is not nearly enough of the time, she is walking in Prospect Park, watching depressing documentaries, or creating unselfconscious dance parties with her amazing friends.