Fishman briefed National Press Foundation fellows in December 2021: From the Newsroom to the Best-Seller List.

Charles Fishman is an award-winning reporter and New York Times bestselling author, whose storytelling ranges from the busiest maternity ward in the U.S. to America’s only bomb factory. His most recent book is One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon, a rollicking retelling of the race to the Moon in the 1960s which became a New York Times bestseller in its first week.

Fishman started his career in newspapers — beginning at the Washington Post as a reporter; then at the Orlando Sentinel as a Sunday magazine writer and editor; and eventually having responsibility for half the newsroom at the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, as an assistant managing editor. He was a founding staff member of Fast Company magazine.

Fishman is the author of The Wal-Mart Effect, the first book to pierce Wal-Mart’s wall of secrecy and explain how the retailer really works; and of The Big Thirst, the bestselling book about water in a generation. He is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller A Curious Mind, with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.

Early in his career, Fishman worked as a deckhand on a Mississippi River tugboat. As part of the reporting for One Giant Leap, he flew in zero-gravity. Fishman lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Trish Wilson, a senior national editor for the Washington Post, their two children, and two Labrador retrievers.