Cynthia Barnett

Early life and education

Barnett was born in Fort Myers, Florida, and raised in Florida and California. Barnett earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in American history with a specialization in environmental history, both from the University of Florida, and has described Florida’s nature and weather as significant inspiration for her work.

Career

Barnett spent her early career as a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor before joining Florida Trend magazine, where she was known for investigative reporting. Her investigation “Road Racket” into an overcharging scheme involving some of Florida’s major highway contractors was recognized by the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information as one of the “Top Freedom of Information stories of the past 30 years.” Her exposé on inspectors general fired by the subjects of their scrutiny won a national Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Magazine Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists.

After investigating desalination, wetlands mitigation banking, coastal water quality and other water issues, Barnett has described becoming “obsessed with water.” She spent 2004-2005 as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan researching freshwater scarcity. Her first book, Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S., published by the University of Michigan Press in 2007, foresaw the spread of U.S. water conflict to the relatively wet eastern half of the country. Mirage won the Gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards and was named by the Tampa Bay Times as one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read. Her second book, Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, published by Beacon Press in 2011, reported on water solutions from Australia to Singapore and articulated a water ethic for the United States. It also described a “water-industrial complex” that influences U.S. water policy toward twentieth century supply-side projects. Blue Revolution was named one of the best science books of 2011 by The Boston Globe. Writing in the Globe, author Anthony Doerr described Barnett’s author persona as “part journalist, part mom, part historian and part optimist.”

Barnett left her full-time job in 2012 to devote her career to the environment and her books. Since then, she has written on water and climate change for National Geographic, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Salon, Politico, Discover, Orion, Ensia, the Tampa Bay Times, and other publications. For her third book, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, she set out to draw a broader audience with a popular topic, weather, and a lyrical approach to water and climate – “more poetry than pipelines,” she says in her public lectures. Rain was published in 2015 by Crown, a division of Random House, and widely lauded for Barnett’s nature writing and ability to translate science for a general audience. Rain was longlisted for the National Book Award, a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing, Gold medal winner for best general nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards, and named a best book of 2015 by NPR’s Science Friday, The Boston Globe, the Tampa Bay Times, the Miami Herald and Kirkus Reviews.

Barnett is also Environmental Journalist in Residence at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, where she teaches Environmental Journalism and Nature & Adventure Journalism. She is a critic of environmental communication targeted exclusively to conservation audiences and encourages students to reach “the Caring Middle.” She first wrote about the Caring Middle in a commencement address to the Unity College class of 2012 in Unity, Maine.