Stephanie Nolen

About Stephanie

Stephanie Nolen has reported from the front lines of war zones, humanitarian crises and a series of global pandemics, from more than 80 countries and over more than 30 years as a journalist. She is the global health reporter for The New York Times – tasked with tracking the ongoing toll of the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics, as well emerging diseases that threaten the world, and critical issues of access to care and medicines.

A former bureau chief for The Globe and Mail in Johannesburg, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, she has unique insight into the political, economic and social forces that shape how people live and die across the global south.

Her work is followed by readers around the world looking to better understand both the human cost of viruses, from Covid to Ebola to Zika, and also the solutions that communities find to fight back. She is best known as a reporter who always goes there – to meet Pashtun women behind the high mud walls of their homes in the Khyber Pass, and teenagers fighting back against genital cutting in villages in Sierra Leone, and girls fleeing forced marriages in rural India, and AIDS activists fighting for their lives in the township of Soweto. She tells stories that are rich with detail, empathy and inspiration.

Stephanie is the author of 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, which the UN Special Envoy for AIDS called the “best book ever written about the pandemic” and Bono said “will tear you apart before putting you back together.” The book was published around the world, translated into seven languages, won the 2007 PEN ‘Courage’ Award and was nominated for the 2007 Governor-Generals’ Award for Non-Fiction. She is also the author of Shakespeare’s Face, about a mysterious portrait of the great English playwright, and Promised the Moon: the Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race.

The Montreal native holds a Bachelor of Journalism (Hons) from the University of King’s College in Halifax and an MSc in Development Economics from the London School of Economics in England. In addition, she was conferred honorary doctorates of civil law from the University of King’s College, the University of Victoria, Guelph University and the University of Calgary. She is an eight-time winner of Canada’s National Newspaper Award, a four time winner of the National Magazine Award and an eight-time winner of the Amnesty International Media Award. In 2022, she was presented with the World Press Freedom Lifetime Achievement Award.

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