Clara Bingham

Clara Bingham (born in Louisville, Kentucky) is an American journalist, author and documentary film producer.^[1]

She has written three books: Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul (May 31, 2016),^[2][3] Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law (co-written with Laura Leedy Gansler 2002)^[4] which was adapted into the 2005 feature film, North Country. Class Action was a 2002 Los Angeles Times best book of the year^[5] and won the AAUW Speaking Out For Justice Award in 2007.^[6] Bingham's first book was Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress (1997).^[7]

As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek magazine from 1989 to 1993, Bingham covered the George H. W. Bush administration leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. Her writing has appeared widely in publications including, The Daily Beast,^[8] Vanity Fair,^[9] Ms.,^[10] Vogue,^[11] Talk Magazine, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, The Washington Monthly,^[12] and United Press International, the wire service for which she wrote as a stringer in Papua New Guinea in 1987. Bingham also worked as a press secretary for Democrat Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign.^[13]

An expose about the Air Force Academy rape scandal that Bingham wrote for Vanity Fair^[14] earned her the 2004 Exceptional Merit in Media Award (EMMA) given by the National Women's Political Caucus,^[15] and was anthologized in the Best American Crime Writing 2004 Edition.^[16] In January 2016, Investigation Discovery's Vanity Fair Confidential series featured Binghman in its one-hour program about the Air Force Academy rape scandal.^[17]

While reporting a story in West Virginia, Bingham, a Kentucky native, witnessed the destructive effects of Mountain Top Removal coal mining for the first time.^[18] Afterwards, she spent several years producing The Last Mountain (directed by Bill Haney), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011,^[19] screened in theaters in over 60 American cities, and won the International Documentary Association's Pare Lorentz Award.^[20][21]

Personal life

Bingham was born into a newspaper family^[22][23] in 1963 in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved to New York City in 1968. She graduated from Harvard University in 1985 with a degree in History and Literature,^[24] where she served as co-news editor of The Harvard Independent.^[25]

Bingham lives in New York City and has three children^[26] with her ex-husband, biographer David Michaelis.^[27] In April 2014, she married Joseph Finnerty, a lawyer, who has three children of his own.^[28]

References

External links

• Official website