Catherine Orenstein

CATHERINE ORENSTEIN has written on culture, mythology, and power for The New York Times (where she is an occasional contributor to the op-ed page), The Washington Post, The San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine, and Ms. Magazine, among other places. Her opinion pieces have run on the Knight-Ridder newswire and appear in anthologies. She has lectured at Harvard, Penn, and Columbia universities, and appeared on ABC TV World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, CNN and NPR All Things Considered. Her first book, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality & the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, follows a fairy tale through time, from the werewolf trials of old Europe to the movies of modern Hollywood, to trace our changing ideas about women, sexuality and morality. It has been translated into multiple languages and featured in national newspapers and magazines, on network television and NPR. Newsweek called it "revelatory," the Wall Street Journal called it "beguiling," Naomi Wolf called it “laid back, readable brilliance," and Harvard University Dean Maria Tatar, an authority on fairy tales, wrote: "Trained as a folklorist, Orenstein also has a writer's gift for making her account sparkle with dazzling insights."

Orenstein has lived and worked around the world and particularly in Haiti, where she traveled as a folklore student and journalist in the 1990s, during a time of political upheaval. As a result of that experience, she has reported extensively on Haiti; organized fact-finding delegations for journalists, scholars and lawmakers; and consulted with the United Nations human rights mission. In 1996 she worked with a team of international human rights lawyers to assist victims of military and paramilitary violence in seeking justice. She investigated tortures, rapes, political assassinations and massacres; interviewed hundreds of victims, witnesses and alleged criminals; and coordinated lawyers' and victims' efforts to build cases against their persecutors. She has written about some of these cases and their aftermaths in Haiti and in the United States.

Orenstein graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and has a masters from Columbia University. She has been awarded a Peabody-Gardner Fellowship, the Cordier Essay Prize (from Columbia), a Tinker grant, and was nominated for the Prize for Promise, designed "to identify young women, aged 21-35, of great promise and vision who could...become world leaders in their respective fields." In 2006 she was a senior fellow at the Center for Work-Life Policy, where she did research on Fortune 500 companies’ top women and minority executives, and new ideas of work and success in America. She is currently a fellow with the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, and is spearheading a national op-ed initiative for women.

Orenstein is fluent in Haitian Creole and conversant in French, Italian, and basic Spanish.