New Yorker magazine staff writer Ariel Levy to speak at Sweet Briar Oct. 9

Ariel Levy


Ariel Levy, staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the best-selling memoir “The Rules Do Not Apply,” will visit Sweet Briar College at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9, for a presentation on her career as a journalist. The event takes place in the Reahard Learning Gallery of Mary Helen Cochran Library and is free and open to the public.

Levy joined The New Yorker in 2008. Her subjects for the magazine have included profiles of the South African runner Caster Semenya, the artist Catherine Opie, the swimmer Diana Nyad, the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act. In addition to profiles, Levy writes regularly about literature, arts and culture, as well as sports, food and national and international politics and events.



Levy won a 2014 National Magazine Award for essays and criticism for her essay “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” which is the basis for her memoir, and guest-edited “The Best American Essays 2015.” Levy’s first book was “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,” which examines the evolution of the women’s movement. Before joining The New Yorker, she was a contributing editor at New York for 12 years.

Levy’s appearance is connected with the College’s core reading and writing class for first-year students, The Mindful Writer. The course is based on The New Yorker magazine, which serves as the model text. Students are given individual 12-week subscriptions to the magazine and over the course of the 12-week term read deeply across the magazine’s commentary, cultural criticism, personal essays and reporting. They also write and revise three pieces of writing that might fall within one of the magazine’s departments.

Last year, New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead visited the College.

For more information, email Carrie Brown, director for the Center of Creativity, Design and the Arts, at cbrown@sbc.edu.