Frances Stead Sellers


Frances Stead Sellers is a senior writer and editor at The Washington Post.

Life and career

As a national political reporter, Sellers covered the 2016 presidential campaign, writing about the leading candidates and key figures in the Trump administration. She was a member of the team that wrote the 2016 best seller Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President.
She has been a senior editor in charge of several sections of The Washington Post, including Health and Science and the signature daily section, Style, which focuses on political profiles, personalities, arts and ideas.
As deputy national editor, Sellers ran the newsroom's health, science and environmental coverage, during the battle over health reform, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the 2011 Japanese tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Her previous jobs at the Post include deputy editor of Outlook, the Sunday commentary section.
Sellers joined The Post from Civilization, the bi-monthly magazine of the Library of Congress. She was a key member of the launch team, and led the magazine to a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in its first year of publication. Sellers started her career at Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She has appeared as a commentator on a range of subjects on TV and radio, including BBC World News, NPR's Diane Rehm Show and MSNBC's Morning Joe and interviewed prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Her article on Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke was selected as notable literary nonfiction in “The Best American Essays 2015.”
Frances Stead Sellers was born in Britain, graduated from Oxford University and came to the United States as a British Thouron scholar in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Among many other topics, she is known for writing about language, citizenship and identity. Sellers is married to the law professor Mortimer Sellers.

Awards