Kathleen McLaughlin is an award-winning journalist who reports and writes about the consequences of economic inequality around the world. A frequent contributor to The Washington Post and The Guardian, McLaughlin’s reporting has also appeared in The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, and more. She is a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and has won multiple awards for her reporting on labor issues around the globe.
McLaughlin’s first book, Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry, is a “haunting” (Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even) and deeply personal investigation of an underground for-profit medical industry and the American underclass it drains for blood and profit.
McLaughlin spent 15 years as a correspondent in China, where she won multiple SABEW awards from the Association for Business Journalists of for her reporting on labor and human rights abuses in the massive factories that supply the world’s tech products and cheap clothing, and reporting on the displacement of rural villagers in the rush for development. Her work traced the fault lines of China’s economic rise and how workers got caught in the crosshairs, and was recognized by the True Story Award and the One World Media awards. She traced a trail of counterfeit medications from China to East Africa and wrote about the consequences of China’s entry into the sphere of global health. As a correspondent for Science magazine, she revealed China’s plan to create a national park system to protect endangered species.
She now lives in Montana, where she was born and raised, and continues to write about social justice and ongoing threats to democracy for The Guardian, The Nation and other national outlets.
McLaughlin’s visit is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation and individual donors. During her time in Livingston, McLaughlin will meet with students at Park High. The free, public event will include a book signing and reception.
