The Atlantic Announces Henry Grabar and Judith Shulevitz as Staff Writers and Chris Suellentrop as Senior Editor; Uzodinma Iweala Joins as Contributing Writer

The Atlantic is announcing several journalists joining in January as part of a continued newsroom expansion: Henry Grabar and Judith Shulevitz as staff writers; Chris Suellentrop as a senior editor; along with Uzodinma Iweala as a contributing writer.

Henry covered housing, infrastructure, and urban life for Slate, and is the author most recently of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. Judith becomes a staff writer after several years as a contributing writer; she has written wide-ranging criticism for The Atlantic since 2015, and will do more of this work on staff. Chris comes from The Washington Post, where he was most recently an op-ed editor. And Uzodinma, the author of Beasts of No Nation and a previous CEO of the Africa Center and Ventures Africa magazine, will contribute writing beginning next month.

An announcement is below from The Atlantic’s executive editor Adrienne LaFrance:

Dear everyone,

I’m writing to share excellent news about several journalists joining The Atlantic in January.

First, Henry Grabar: Henry is joining us as a staff writer. He comes to us from Slate, where he covered housing, infrastructure, and urban life. In more than a decade on that beat, some of his many memorable stories include an account of his battle with knotweed, an urban planning diary of the Paris Summer Olympics, an investigation into why Americans don’t live in hotels anymore (but should!), and a 99% Invisible episode about kids who get around town by themselves. He was the editor of the 2019 anthology The Future of Transportation, and is the author of the 2023 book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, a wonderful book that demonstrates Henry’s knack for making seemingly boring things interesting. He is currently working on a book about the design, financing, permitting, and construction of an apartment building.

Next: Uzodinma Iweala, who is joining us as a contributing writer. Uzo was previously CEO of the Africa Center in Harlem. Before that, he was co-founder, editor in chief, and CEO of Ventures Africa magazine. His debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, became a film starring Idris Elba, and he followed it with a second novel, Speak No Evil. He is also the author of Our Kind of People: A Continent’s Challenge, A Country’s Hope, a beautifully reported look at the AIDS crisis in Africa. Most recently, he has been a fellow at the University of Heidelberg’s Katë Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post Apocalyptic Studies. We are very happy that Uzo is bringing his extraordinary talents to The Atlantic and can’t wait to read him in our pages.

Next: The great Judith Shulevitz is joining The Atlantic as a staff writer. Obviously you all know Judith’s excellent work. She has been writing for The Atlantic since 2015, and has been a contributing writer since 2022. She is a sharp, sophisticated, wide-ranging critic: In just the past few years, she’s taken on the fiction of Muriel Spark, Han Kang, Franz Kafka, Lorrie Moore, and Salman Rushdie, among others. Often, her reviews are not just about a new book, but function as keen assessments of an entire body of work. (Her piece out today on Charlie Kirk’s posthumous book is—like everything Judith writes—a must-read.) Judith is the author of The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (2010). And she was the founding culture editor of Slate and co-editor of the beloved Lingua Franca.

Finally, Chris Suellentrop is joining us as a senior editor. Chris comes to us from The Washington Post, where he served as an opinions editor. He has also been a story editor at The New York Times Magazine (where he edited an Ellie Award–winning profile of Mike Allen by The Atlantic’s own Mark Leibovich) and a staff editor at the Times op-ed page (where he was the newspaper’s first blogger!). Other stops in his impressive career include: senior editor at Politico and deputy Washington bureau chief at Slate. (Fun fact: The December 1996 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life decreed that Chris’s college magazine was one of the three best humor sites on the internet, a higher rating than it gave to The Onion.)

Recent editorial hires at The Atlantic include staff writers Will Gottsegen, Jonathan Lemire, Lily Meyer, Luis Parrales, Alex Reisner, Simon Shuster, and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez; and senior editors Paul Beckett, Emily Bobrow, Adam Kirsch, Michael Leibel, and Katie Zezima.

Press Contacts:
Anna Bross and Paul Jackson | The Atlantic
press@theatlantic.com