Jeff Biggers: Biography and Background

Jeff Biggers (born in 1963) is an American Book Award-winning historian, journalist, playwright, novelist and monologist. He is the author and editor of twelve books. His most recent nonfiction book, In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy, is a cultural history and travelogue of the island. In the fall of 2024, he published his debut novel, Disturbing the Bones, coauthored with celebrated film director Andrew Davis. Biggers also wrote the introduction to author William Demby's classic novel on Rome, The Catacombs, in 2026.

According to Yale Climate Connection, Biggers is "a prominent author and activist writing extensively about environmental and climate issues", performing and lecturing frequently at festivals, theatres, conferences, universities and schools across the United States and Italy.

As the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, he has served as the Climate Narrative Playwright-in-Residence at Indiana University Northwest, Writer-in-Residence in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Iowa, and as the Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan College in Georgia. As part of his climate narrative work, Biggers is the author and performer of the "Ecopolis Monologues," in which he envisions ways for regenerative city initiatives. Adapted to local initiatives and history, the Ecopolis monologues had been performed at conferences, universities and theatre venues throughout America, and in Sardinia, and Italy.

In 2008, Biggers wrote a series of articles calling for a Green New Deal. As the grandson of a coal miner from southern Illinois, Jeff Biggers has been a vocal critic of mountaintop removal in Appalachia and strip mining across the nation, poorly enforced black lung and mining workplace safety laws, and the fallacy of "clean coal" slogans. Biggers' dispatches and reports from coal mining regions around the world have been collected at the Reckoning in Appalachia website.

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