Rose George is a British journalist and author. She has explored topics such as refugees, sanitation and human waste, and human blood in her books.
Education
In 1992, George earned a First-Class Honours BA in Modern Languages from Somerville College, Oxford, followed by an MA in international politics in 1994 at the University of Pennsylvania, as a Thouron Scholar and Fulbright Fellow.
Career
In 1994, she embarked on her writing career as an intern at The Nation magazine in New York City. Subsequently, she assumed the roles of senior editor and writer at COLORS magazine, a bilingual publication focused on "local cultures with global reach," which was distributed in eighty countries. The magazine was initially based in Rome, later relocating to Paris and then Venice.
In 1999, she made the move to London and embarked on a freelance career. Since then, she has contributed her writing to various publications, including the Independent on Sunday, Arena, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Details, Bad Idea, and others. She also served as a war correspondent in Kosovo for Condé Nast Traveler magazine and notably attended Saddam Hussein's birthday party on two occasions.
Until 2010, she held the position of senior editor at large for Tank, a London-based quarterly magazine covering fashion, art, reportage, and culture.
She has written four non-fiction books: A Life Removed (Penguin 2004), which explores the daily reality of refugees and displaced people in and from Liberia.The Big Necessity: the Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters (Metropolitan/Portobello 2008), which was described as the one of "best nonfiction books of the new millennium" by the New York Times.Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, which was released in August 2013. The UK title is Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry the Brings you 90% of Everything; it was also released August 2013. George lived for five weeks aboard a shipping container ship to research her book on the shipping industry, and a week patrolling for pirates on a Portuguese navy frigate.Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood (Metropolitan Books, 2018). Her book Nine Pints was chosen by Bill Gates as one of his "Five Books... Should Read This Summer" in 2019.
Books
A Life Removed (Penguin Books, 2004); The Big Necessity (Metropolitan/Portobello, 2008); Deep Sea and Foreign Going (Portobello, 2013); , published in the US as Ninety Percent of Everything (Metropolitan Books, 2013); Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood'' (Metropolitan Books, 2018);
Personal life
Rose George is based in Yorkshire, England. She is a fell runner and has written about suffering from severe endometriosis. She speaks fluent French and Italian.
References
Sources
Rose, George. THE BIG NECESSITY. 1st edition. New York, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. George, Rose."... And Sewage, Too", nytimes.com. 28 April 2010.