Caroline Alexander (author)
Caroline Alexander is a British-American author, classicist and filmmaker. She is the author of the best-selling The Endurance, and The Bounty, and other works of literary non-fiction, such as The Way to Xanadu and The War that Killed Achilles. In 2015, she published a new and critically acclaimed translation of Homer's Iliad.
Alexander is writer and producer of critically acclaimed and top grossing documentaries such as The Endurance, Tiger Tiger, and other feature and IMAX documentaries.
Personal Life and Education
Born in the United States of British parents, Alexander grew up in North Florida, but travelled widely, living in the West Indies, Italy, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands. She began her classical studies at Florida State University in her senior year of high-school. In 1977, among the first class of female Rhodes Scholars, she attended Oxford University, taking her degree in Philosophy and Theology.Between 1982 and 1985, she established a small department of classics at the University of Malawi, in south-central Africa. Following this, she obtained her doctorate in Classics at Columbia University, as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities.
An avid athlete, Alexander was among the first women admitted to the US National Modern Pentathlon Training program, competing in three national championships for this sport, and was an alternate for the 1982 US World Team.
Career
Alexander began her career as a freelance writer while in graduate school, and subsequently has published widely on subjects ranging from Antarctic exploration, travels in central Africa, tigers, butterfly-poachers, ancient history, lost treasure, Xanadu, and military subjects such as shell shock and blast-induced neurotrauma. She has published two New York Times best-sellers.Alexander was a Contributing Writer for National Geographic Magazine for many years, and has also written for The New Yorker, Outside and Smithsonian among other publications; her work has appeared in a number of anthologies of literary non-fiction.
Her National Geographic Magazine cover story, “,” was praised for exploring the effects of blast-induced trauma on modern soldiers, and nominated for a Kavli Science Journalism Award.
Alexander is a member of the American Philological Association, the Royal Geographical Society, the Explorer's Club, and the Directors Guild of America.
| Title | Production Company | Credits | Notes |
| Tiger, Tiger | White Mountain Films/Kennedy Marshall production | George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/producer | 90 minute theatrical documentary and 40 minute IMAX version, following big-cat conservationist Alan Rabinowitz into one of the last tiger habitats, the mangrove forest of the Indian and Bangladesh Sunderbans |
| The Lord God Bird | White Mountain Films Production | George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer | 90 minute theatrical documentary about the possible re-discovery of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker |
| The Endurance | White Mountain Films Production | George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/Executive Producer | 90 minute theatrical documentary about Shackleton's 1914 expedition. Released in 2001; National Board of Review Best Documentary and numerous other awards; two hour television version nominated for a British Academy Award, 2000. |
| Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure | White Mountain Films Production | George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/consultant | IMAX film shot on location in the Antarctic. Winner of best Giant Screen Film Award, 2000. |
Articles
- “.”. The American Scholar, Summer 2019.
- “War of Words”. Lapham’s Quarterly, Spring 2018.
- “The Dread Gorgon” Lapham’s Quarterly, Summer 2017.
- “Greece, Gods, and the Great Beyond,”. National Geographic Magazine. July 2016.
- “War Shock: Blast and the Brain”. National Geographic Magazine. February 2015.
- “”. Outside Magazine. June 2014.
- “The Wine-Like Sea”. Lapham’s Quarterly. Summer 2013.
- “Cry of the Tiger”. National Geographic Magazine. December, 2011. Nominated for Overseas Press Club Award.
- “Gold in the Ground”. National Geographic Magazine. November, 2011.
- “Shock of War”. Smithsonian Magazine. September 2010.
- “The Great Game”. Lapham’s Quarterly. Summer, 2010.
- “Captain Bligh’s Cursed Breadfruit”. Smithsonian Magazine. September 2009.
- “If the Stones Could Speak”. National Geographic Magazine, June 2008.
- “Tigerland”. The New Yorker, April 21, 2008.
- “Making a New World’: Gertrude Bell and the Creation of Iraq”. National Geographic Magazine, March, 2008.
- “The Face of War”. Smithsonian Magazine. February 2007.
- “Murdering the Impossible”. National Geographic Magazine, November 2006. National Magazine Award Finalist.
- “Across the River Styx”. The New Yorker, October 25, 2004.
- “The Wreck of the Pandora”. The New Yorker, August 4, 2003.
- “Echoes of the Heroic Age”; “Ascent to Glory”; “Alexander the Conqueror”. National Geographic Magazine, December 1999 – March 2000.
- “Shackleton and the Legend of Endurance”. National Geographic Magazine, November 1998.
- “Crimes of Passion”. Outside Magazine, January 1996.
- “Plato Speaks”. Granta, September 1995.
- “A Shot in the Night” Outside Magazine, July 1994.
- “Little Men”. Outside Magazine, April 1994.
- “An Ideal State”. The New Yorker, December 16, 1991.
- “The White Goddess of the Wangora”. The New Yorker, April 8, 1991.
- “Vital Powers: a Profile of Daphne Park, O.B.E., C.M.G.”. The New Yorker, January 30, 1989.
- “The North Borneo Expedition of 1981”. The New Yorker, September 14, 1987.