Alex Shoumatoff

Alexander Shoumatoff (born November 4, 1946) is an American writer and journalist known primarily for his books and magazine articles about environmental issues and world affairs. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1978 to 1987, a founding contributing editor of Outside and Condé Nast Traveler, and was the senior-most contributing editor to Vanity Fair from 1986 to 2015. Shoumatoff was called "the farthest flung of the far flung writers" by The New Yorker and "one of our greatest storytellers" by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.

Shoumatoff's most famous articles include a Vanity Fair article about art collector Cornelius Gurlitt who was discovered to possess hundreds of paintings obtained from Nazi plundering during World War II, a 1986 article for Vanity Fair about the murder of primatologist Dian Fossey in Rwanda, one of the first international profiles of Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso in 1984 for The New Yorker, an article on the origin of AIDS for Vanity Fair which became his book African Madness, and a profile of the organization Product Red led by U2 front man Bono.

Shoumatoff has written 11 books and since 2001 has been the editor of a web site, "Dispatches From The Vanishing World", devoted to "documenting and raising awareness about the planet's rapidly disappearing natural and cultural diversity". Hundreds of pages of his writing are posted on the site. His eleventh book, The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches From A Vanishing World, was published by Beacon Press in April 2017.