Brooke Hauser is a longtime journalist. She is currently editing and writing for The Boston Globe. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper in Northampton, Massachusetts — the first woman to be in that role on a permanent basis since the paper’s founding in 1786.
She is also the author of two books: Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman, winner of the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Nonfiction Book, and The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens, a winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award.
Hauser has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker online, Allure, and Marie Claire, among many other publications. Originally from Miami, Florida, she got her start in journalism writing for her local newspaper, The Miami Herald. After graduating from Kenyon College in Ohio, she covered the film industry as a writer and editor at Premiere, before returning to her love of local journalism as a contributor to “The City” section of The New York Times, where, among other people, she wrote about Baptist preachers, Chinese beauty queens, Rikers Island corrections officers, and the ghostwriter behind the Algonquin Hotel’s resident cat.
In 2018, Hauser became the editor-in-chief of the Gazette. While at the helm, she led the newspaper through a time of great change amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and the end of the Trump administration. She also strengthened diversity efforts in both news coverage and columns; commissioned the Gazette’s beautiful new nameplate, showing landmarks in the newspaper’s coverage area, which grew to include the city of Holyoke during her tenure; and maintained the paper’s award-winning excellence amid all of the challenges facing the local news landscape.
Hauser left the Gazette at the end of 2020, an experience she wrote about in The Boston Globe Magazine. She occasionally teaches nonfiction writing at Smith College in Northampton, where she lives with her family.