CONTRIBUTORS
Our contributors — journalists, writers, illustrators, authors — bring The Persistent to life. You can get to know a few of them here.
Brianna Holt
Brianna Holt is an award-winning author, writer, and journalist who splits her time between New York City and Paris. Her work explores culture, identity, and race, and has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Cut, The Atlantic, Vogue, and beyond. Her debut book, In Our Shoes, was released in April 2023. She is also a screenwriter: her first screenplay, Blueprint, was listed at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, and she co-wrote the scripted podcast Possession (Audible), which received a 2024 Ambie nomination. In addition to her creative work, Brianna is an assistant adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she teaches and mentors emerging writers.
Deborah Copaken
Deborah Copaken is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, Between Here and April, and Ladyparts. She was a writer on Emily in Paris and an Emmy Award–winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal, among many others. She is the Founder and Editor of the 2025 Webby Award-winning Substack, Ladyparts.
Holly Baxter
Holly Baxter is a senior staff reporter at The Independent, where she writes political analysis and long-form features. Her first novel, Clickbait, was released in 2024. Now based in New York, Holly worked in London for 10 years for publications including The Guardian and The New Statesman.
Molly Dickens
Molly Dickens' career path has wound its way through academic research to maternal health and ‘femtech’ to co-founding a gender equity non-profit. Molly is currently weaving this work together on her Substack, ‘The Maternal Stress Project’, where she focuses on the intersection of stress, women’s health, and the critical importance of structures, systems, and cultural narratives that better support women and working parents.
Phoebe Gavin
Phoebe Gavin is a career and leadership coach helping ambitious professionals build successful, fulfilling careers without sacrificing work-life balance. She is a career coach, speaker, and trainer specializing in career strategy, negotiation, and empathetic leadership.
Jenny Kroik
Jenny Kroik is an illustrator based in New York City. She has contributed covers for The New Yorker magazine, and creates art for numerous clients in publishing, fashion, television and more.
Aubrey Hirsch
Aubrey Hirsch is the author of Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life as a Woman in America. Her essays and comics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, TIME Magazine and elsewhere.
Lucy Webster
Lucy Webster is a journalist, author and campaigner focused on disability and anti-ableism. She writes for major outlets in the UK. Much of her work looks at the intersection of disability with other marginalised identities, and her book, The View From Down Here, calls for disabled women to be included in a new feminism.
Ruchika T. Malhotra
Ruchika T. Malhotra is a former business journalist whose writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review and The New York Times, among others. She is the author of national bestseller, Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success and Inclusion on Purpose. Follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Luba Kassova
Luba Kassova is a journalist, researcher, and co-founder of the audience-strategy consultancy AKAS. Formerly the head of Audiences for BBC News, she is the author of the award-winning Missing Perspectives of Women series and a PhD candidate at the University of Westminster. In 2026, Luba was recognized by Journalism.co.uk as one of 25 standout women in the industry.
Brigid Schulte
Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist, keynote speaker and author, who was part of the team at The Washington Post that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She is the director of New America’s Better Life Lab, and hosts the Better Life Lab podcast on Slate. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, The Guardian, Fast Company, New York magazine and many others.
Natalie Newsome
Natalie is a London-based artist and illustrator who creates personalised commissions, designs wedding stationery, and offers live event painting. She works across a range of mediums, often using watercolour, pastel, and acrylic to create expressive pieces filled with movement. Natalie has exhibited her work in London, Cheshire, and North Wales, and her artworks are held in private collections across the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia.
Monique El-Faizy
Monique El-Faizy is a journalist and author who has worked in the US, the Middle East, Asia, the UK, and Europe, covering the interplay between gender, religion, and far-right politics. She first started writing about feminist issues for the Guardian Women’s Page in the early 1990s. She is currently working on a book about the Gisèle Pelicot case, to be published in 2027.
Ruchi Kumar
Ruchi Kumar is an independent journalist reporting on conflict and politics as seen from a gendered lens. She has reported extensively from South Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and used to be based in Kabul, Afghanistan, for over six years.
