Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Journalist

A born-and-bred Washingtonian, Juliet Eilperin graduated in 1992 magna cum laude from Princeton University, where she received a bachelor's in Politics with a certificate in Latin American Studies. In the fall of 1992 she went to Seoul, South Korea on a Luce Scholarship, which allowed her to cover politics and economics for an English-language magazine. Returning to Washington, Ms. Eilperin wrote for Louisiana and Florida papers at States News Service and then joined Roll Call newspaper after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. In March 1998 she joined The Washington Post as its House of Representatives reporter, where she covered the impeachment of Bill Clinton, lobbying, legislation, and five national congressional campaigns.

Since April of 2004 she has covered the environment for the national desk, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans, and air quality. In pursuit of these stories she has gone scuba diving with sharks in the Bahamas, trekking on the Arctic tundra with Selma Hayek and Jake Gyllenhaal, and searching on her hands and knees for rare insects in the caves of Tennessee. After the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006 the Post asked Ms. Eilperin to co-author an ongoing series on the House, titled "Takeover," in order to examine how the new Democratic majority hads transformed Capitol Hill, and she is now covering the presidential race as well as continuing to also serve as the Post's nation environmental reporter.

During her first year at the Post Ms. Eilperin was the most prolific writer on the news staff, writing more than 200 stories. In the spring of 2005 she served as the youngest-ever McGraw Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, teaching political reporting to a group of undergraduate and graduate students. In the spring of 2005 Rowman & Littlefield published her first book, "Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives." Her book has been featured on several radio and television shows, including Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." Ms. Eilperin is currently working on a book on sharks, to be published in the spring of 2009 by Knopf-Pantheon.