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Kathleen Parker

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Taking the country's pulse -- and assessing its health.


Photo by Tom Kochel

Kathleen Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Judges selected Parker for her "perceptive, often witty columns on an array of political and moral issues, gracefully sharing the experiences and values that lead her to unpredictable conclusions." Read her prize-winning columns here.

"In a media genre that's all too often predictable, Kathleen Parker almost never fails to surprise – with her passion, her wit and her creativity. She's an independent thinker and her viewpoint is often so fresh and original, you can't help but be moved even when you disagree."

– Sharon Grigsby, deputy editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News

Kathleen Parker’s clear, descriptive, lively writing underscores her common-sense approach to life's challenges. In her weekly column, she assesses the country’s mental health with a Rorschach uniquely her own – a reporter’s gimlet eye combined with a sense of humor that Parker attributes to having grown up with five mothers. "My ambitious goal," she says, "is to try to inject a little sanity into a world gone barking mad."

Now one of America's most popular opinion columnists, appearing in more than 400 newspapers, Parker is at home both inside and outside the Washington Beltway. But she came to column-writing the old-fashioned way, working her way up journalism’s ladder from smaller papers to larger ones. "I never set out to become a commentator – and do continue to resist the label 'pundit' – but I found that keeping my opinion out of my writing was impossible," says Parker. "One can only stand watching from the sidelines for so long without finally having to say, 'Um, excuse me, but you people are nuts.'"

Praised for "attacking ignorance and stupidity with vividness and originality" by the judges of the prestigious H.L. Mencken Writing Award, which she won in 1993, Parker gained a rapt and appreciative audience throughout the 1990s. But it was in the days and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that her attempts to "inject a little sanity" established her as a premier commentator.

Parker started her column in 1987 when she was a staff writer for The Orlando Sentinel. Her column was nationally syndicated in 1995 and she joined The Washington Post Writers Group in 2006. Along the way, she has contributed articles to The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan and Fortune Small Business, and she serves on USA Today's Board of Contributors and writes for that newspaper's op-ed page. She is a regular guest on "The Chris Matthews Show" on NBC. Her book "Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care" was published in 2008 by Random House.

As an undergraduate, Parker studied in both the United States and abroad, including the University of Valencia in Spain. She holds a master's degree in Spanish from Florida State University, and is writer in residence at the Buckley School of Public Speaking in Camden, S.C.

Parker is married and has three sons. She divides her time between Camden and Washington, D.C.