Rose George

Rose George is a British journalist and author. She has explored topics such as refugees, sanitation, shipping, blood and fish 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.

Journalism

In 1994, she began 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 published by Benetton. It focused on "local cultures with global reach", and was distributed in 80 countries. The magazine was initially based in Rome, later relocating to Paris and then Treviso.

In 1999, she moved to London to become a freelance journalist. She has written for many publications including The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Spectator, Arena and many others. She also served as a war correspondent in Kosovo for Condé Nast Traveler magazine for one day, and twice attended Saddam Hussein's birthday party.

George ended a Substack post criticizing UK politicians Matt Hancock and Suella Braverman by writing:And I wonder whether the current gender fluid trans nonsense and its accompanying violence and lack of debate is because being trans is something to cling to, and when you hold tight to something, you get violent in its defence. I’m not talking here about the men who have co-opted trans rights into the women-silencing misogyny that has captured so many institutions. They will get their reckoning, one day. I mean instead the young girls and young women, mostly, who cling to the new cult because it is accessible and makes a certain sense, and they are led willingly by adults who should know better into surgery and hormones that can wreck lives.

Personal life

George has lived in Leeds since 2011. She is a fell runner and has written about suffering from severe endometriosis in a review of a book about a different topic. She has written widely on women’s health, menstruation and her own difficult menopause. In 2019, she wrote a widely shared essay on depression and the menopause — “It feels like a derangement” — for the New York Review of Books and the Guardian.

Books

It explores the daily reality of refugees and displaced people in and from Liberia.

(UK: Deep Sea and Foreign Going, Portobello Books, ). This was chosen by Bill Gates as one of his "Five Books... You Should Read This Summer" in 2019 (UK: published by Granta Books, ).