Schulz was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, to teacher Margot Schulz and lawyer Isaac Schulz.[5] Her sister is the MIT cognitive scientist Laura Schulz. Schulz has described her family as "a fiercely intellectual family that is very interested in ideas." Schulz graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1992. She then attended Brown University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with a major in history in 1996.[6]
After graduation Schulz planned to take a year off before pursuing a Ph.D.; she lived in Portland, Oregon briefly before moving to Costa Rica with her sister's family. Seeking to remain in Latin America and use her Spanish, Schulz became an editor and reporter at The Santiago Times. Through the experience she "realized that [her] attraction to ideas could be pursued without returning to academia." She returned to the United States in 2001, moving to New York City to work for Grist.[7]
Schulz in 2010
In 2015, Schulz became a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has written about everything from the legacy of an early Muslim immigrant in Wyoming[8] to the radical life of civil rights activist Pauli Murray[9] to Henry David Thoreau's Walden[10] to brown marmorated stinkbugs.[11] In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a National Magazine Award for “The Really Big One,”[12] her story on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest.
She is the author of the book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. Her second book, Lost & Found, was published by Random House on January 11, 2022.[13]
Schulz was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project), and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan and the Middle East.[14]
Reviews and honors
In 2016, Schulz won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for "The Really Big One,"[15] an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. She was also a finalist for the 2017 National Magazine Award for "When Things Go Missing,"[16] an essay about loss and the death of her father.
Reviewing her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010), Dwight Garner wrote: "Ms. Schulz's book is a funny and philosophical meditation on why error is mostly a humane, courageous and extremely desirable human trait. She flies high in the intellectual skies, leaving beautiful sunlit contrails."[17]Daniel Gilbert described her as "a warm, witty and welcome presence who confides in her readers rather than lecturing them. It doesn't hurt that she combines lucid prose with perfect comic timing."[18]
Schulz is married to Casey Cep, a fellow staff writer at The New Yorker; Schulz wrote about falling in love with her in Lost & Found. They live with their infant daughter on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, near where Cep grew up.[19]
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