Edna Bonhomme is a critic, journalist, and historian of science. She is the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues (shortlisted for Best Science Book in Austria) and co-editor of After Sex. Her latest book is Tending to Our Wounds, is out and published by Haymarket Books. Edna is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, from the Andy Warhol Foundation, he Camargo Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Robert Silvers Foundation, and more. Most recently, she was a 2026 finalist for the 2026 Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Scientific American, and elsewhere. She has been based in Berlin since 2017.
From Haiti to Harlem, Egypt to Germany, Tending to Our Wounds explores how healing from the legacies of colonialism, ongoing violence and racial capitalism must include resistance, reparations and reconciliation.
The German translation of A History of the World in Six Plagues (Eingesperrt und ausgegrenzt) has been shortlisted for the Best Science Book Prize in Austria.
A History of the World in Six Plagues examines the deep connection between contagion and confinement, taking readers on a journey across different places and times, from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania and from plantation-era America to today’s COVID-19-affected world. This is a vivid account of how we can be more humane.