Coming into her own: Michelle Obama’s political transformation, and how it may help sway an election

Jodi Kantor, New York Times correspondent and author of “The Obamas,” speaks with Ann Marie Lipinski, curator at the Nieman Foundation and former editor of the Chicago Tribune. Whitney Johnson, author of “Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When you Dare to Dream,” offers the introduction.

Jodi Kantor has covered the world of Barack and Michelle Obama since the beginning of 2007, also writing about national leaders including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Richard Holbrooke, Eric H. Holder Jr., Mitt Romney and many others along the way.

She is the author of “The Obamas,” about the first couple’s time in the White House, published by Little, Brown in January 2012.  Kantor offers insights about Michelle Obama’s political transformation and how it may help sway the 2012 presidential election. Ms. Kantor graduated from Columbia and attended Harvard Law School. But soon after she arrived, she left to work at Slate.com and never looked back. She joined The New York Times in 2003 as Arts & Leisure editor, revamping the section and helping lead a makeover of the culture report. She is now Washington correspondent for the paper.

Ms. Kantor’s talk is co-sponsored by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and the Harvard Writers at Work Lecture Series, which is organized by the Harvard College Writing Program, the Harvard Extension School Master’s Degree Program in Journalism, the Harvard Review, and the Program in General Education.