Kati Marton

Bestselling author Kati Marton has combined a career as an award-winning writer with human rights advocacy. Since 1980, Marton has published nine books and has contributed as a reporter to ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic. Marton’s most recent work, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, was released as an international bestseller and has been translated into 18 languages.

Marton’s remarkable list of books includes Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, an exploration of presidential marriages, from the Wilsons to George W. and Laura Bush, was a New York Times bestseller and has been the basis of several CNN documentaries. Her Cold War memoir, Enemies of the People - My Family’s Journey to America recounts Marton's family’s harrowing history of being targeted by Communist operatives and her parents’ imprisonment as Cold War tensions ran high across Eastern Europe. Enemies of the People was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize and was optioned for a feature film. The New York Times called it “a powerful and absorbing narrative…[with] all the magnetism and yes, the excitement of the very best spy fiction,” while The Washington Post praised Marton’s story as “...one of bravery, suffering, survival and vindication …it’s a terrific story and Marton tells it very well.” For her inspirational, deeply human memoir and immediate New York Times bestseller, Paris: A Love Story, Marton candidly "grapples with an unexpected new stage of life: widowhood...as grief passes into wisdom.” (The Washington Post).

Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House shortly before Marton became a columnist for the Sunday Times of London. Her second book was a novel entitled An American Woman and her third book, an investigative history entitled The Polk Conspiracy – Murder and Cover-up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk was a New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the Year selection. Her fourth book, A Death in Jerusalem – the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, was followed by The Great Escape – Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. The New York Times called True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy, her telling of the true story, “a fascinating window on the delusion and narcissism” of extremists.

Marton hosted NPR’s America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs. She had previously been ABC Bureau Chief in Germany. While based in Germany, Marton reported from Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, East Germany, and the Middle East. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned-and-operated affiliate in Philadelphia. Marton served as a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.

Kati Marton has been honored for her writing, reporting, and human rights advocacy including a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China. She was a Gannett Fellow at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and she received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a PBS Award for reporting from China. She received the Marc H. Tannenbaum Foundation Award for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding and the Athens, Greece-based Kyriazis Foundation prize for the promotion of press freedom. She was awarded the Rbekah Kohut Humanitarian Award by the National Council of Jewish Women and a Matrix Award for Women Who Change the World. Marton was later honored with the Citizen’s Committee of New York’s Marietta Tree Award for Public Service as well as the Edith Wharton Award for Journalism and the Woodhull Institute’s Changemakers Award for Ethical Leadership in the Arts. Marton was awarded the United Nations Association Leo Nevas Human Rights Award and she was named a Rockefeller Foundation Creative Arts Fellow.

Marton previously chaired the International Women’s Health Coalition, a global leader in promoting and protecting the health and human rights of women and girls. She was Chief Advocate for the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations. She also was formerly a member of the board of Human Rights Watch. Marton is currently a director and formerly chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee and the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, P.E.N. International, and the Author’s Guild, and sits on the board of Central European University.

Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, New York, the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. She earned a B.A. in Romance Languages and an M.A. in International Relations from the George Washington University. She also received an honorary doctorate from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.