2024 Hall of Fame Inductee:
Margaret Talbot, Class of 1984
When she was assigned her first article at the Daily Californian to cover a campus speech by the Dalai Lama, Margaret Talbot wasn’t yet an official staff member. Filling in for another reporter, Talbot jumped at the opportunity, filing her first story and joining the news department. Later she became an editorial page editor, and was elected editor-in-chief as a junior in 1981. The training ground provided by the Daily Cal led her to stints at Lingua Franca, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. In 2004, Talbot joined The New Yorker as a staff writer, where she reports on legal issues, social policy, and cultural history, while also writing creative long-form pieces profiling musicians and movie directors. Among the pieces that stand out for Talbot from her 200+ New Yorker bylines are in-depth profiles of the songwriter Mitski and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Among the honors she has received are the Whiting Writers Award and the Japan Society Fellowship. Talbot was the Daily Californian’s Alumni of The Year in 2020. Her books include The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father’s Twentieth Century, and By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Revolution, co-written with her brother, New York Times bestselling-author David Talbot. Widely praised by critics as inspiring a new generation of activists, the book examines transformational periods in the lives of radical leaders of the 1960s and ‘70s.