Maureen Orth

Maureen Orth has been a special correspondent for Vanity Fair since 1993. She started writing for the magazine in 1988. Orth has interviewed Russian president Vladimir Putin and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, among other heads of state. Right after 9/11, Orth journeyed to Central Asia to report on the relationship between terrorism and drugs. She has written investigative pieces regarding the allegations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson and child abuse by Woody Allen and profiled other controversial figures such as Denise and Marc Rich, Mohamed Al Fayed, Gerry Adams, Karl Lagerfeld, Madonna, and Carla Bruni. Orth began her journalism career in 1973 as the third female writer ever hired by Newsweek, where she was the entertainment editor and the lifestyle editor and wrote seven cover stories. Orth won a National Magazine Award for group coverage of the arts at Newsweek and was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Reporting for her article on Michael and Arianna Huffington, which appeared in the November 1994 issue of Vanity Fair. She is the author of Vulgar Favors (Delacorte Press, 1999), a book about the murder of Gianni Versace, and The Importance of Being Famous (Henry Holt, 2002), a collection of her Vanity Fair articles with updates and commentary. Orth is the founder of the Marina Orth Foundation and Escuela Marina Orth in Medellín, Colombia, which she began as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. It is now the first One Laptop Per Child school in Colombia.