In brief
Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, has died at age 35. Best known as a climate journalist, she openly shared her battle with acute myeloid leukemia and her heartfelt thoughts about family and legacy. Schlossberg's work emphasized the importance of climate issues, leaving a significant mark in environmental journalism.
Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former US President John F. Kennedy, has died aged 35. Her family announced her death in a social media post shared by the John F Kennedy Library Foundation, writing: Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts. In November, Schlossberg, a climate journalist, announced her diagnosis of an aggressive form of cancer. She said in an essay that she had been given less than a year to live.
Schlossberg was the daughter of designer Edwin Schlossberg and diplomat Caroline Kennedy. In an article published last month in The New Yorker titled, A Battle With My Blood, Schlossberg revealed she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024, after giving birth to her second child. My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn't remember me, she wrote.
Schlossberg described the treatments she received, including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, but shared that doctors did not give her a good prognosis. She also wrote of the pain she feared her passing would cause her family, which has endured multiple personal tragedies. Her grandfather, President Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and her uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in a plane crash in 1999. Her younger brother, Jack Schlossberg, is running for Congress in New York.
For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry, Schlossberg wrote. Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it, she said. In her essay, Schlossberg also expressed disappointment in her uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Before her widely-read essay about her diagnosis, Schlossberg forged a successful career as a climate journalist. She authored the book Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have. She also wrote about climate and other beats for the New York Times.
In December 2021, she reported on local experiments to harness the energy of the London Underground to provide heat to homes, in an effort to fight climate change.
I think climate change is the biggest story in the world, and it's a story about everything, she told NBC News in 2019. It's about science and nature, but it's also about politics and health and business. To me, looking at this as a journalist, it seemed like a really important story to tell.
And if I could help communicate about it, that might inspire other people to get involved and work on the issue, she said.
