Amy Ellis Nutt

Amy Ellis Nutt is a long-time journalist, most recently at The Washington Post, where she was a member of the Health, Science and Environment team. She specializes in narrative and long-form non-fiction, but has written everything from breaking news to projects, sports to science, memoir, essays, book reviews and investigations. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing in 2011 and was a finalist in the same category in 2009.

Nutt is a graduate of Smith College and has two Masters degrees, one in Philosophy from M.I.T. and a second in Journalism from Columbia University. She began her career as a fact-checker at Sports Illustrated magazine in 1988 and in 1997 joined the staff of The Star-Ledger newspaper in Newark, N.J. In 2014 she became a staff writer at The Washington Post, then left in 2019 to devote herself full-time to book-writing and teaching. Nutt has taught nonfiction writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Princeton University, Smith College, and American University. She is the author of three books, including two NYT bestsellers, and is currently working on her fourth, “American Madness,” a narrative history of mental illness and mental health treatment in America. She lives in Washington, DC.