CNN Anchor Alisyn Camerota to Share New Book at AU
American University (AU) students will have the opportunity to hear from CNN Anchor/Correspondent and School of Communication (SOC) alumna, Alisyn Camerota, about her new book, Combat Love at a special campus event April 2. SOC and Her Campus at American University are co-sponsoring the event.
"I'm a reporter," Camerota said in an American University Magazine interview. "We record real events, we don't dream them up."
Combat Love, her sophomore book, focuses on some of the real events in her own life. The coming of age story covers Camerota’s adolescence, growing up on the Jersey Shore in the 1980s, with a mother-daughter relationship at the center.
The two-time Emmy-award nominee graduated from AU in 1988 with a degree in broadcast journalism from SOC. She was a presenter for several years on Fox News before moving to CNN where she anchored New Day, CNN Newsroom, and the 11 p.m. hour of CNN Tonight.
Camerota has covered monumental events in American news history, spanning from political campaigns to terrorist attacks and natural disasters. She covered Hurricane Harvey in Houston and the #MeToo movement. With a dedication to preventing sexual violence, Camerota has also anchored primetime specials, Tipping Point: Sexual Harassment in America and The Hunting Ground: Sexual Assault on Campus.
She has earned a reputation of covering mass tragedies with a mixture of empathy and journalistic integrity. Camerota interviewed Parkland shooting student survivors and National Rifle Association representatives just hours after the massacre that would eventually lead to a nationwide movement for gun violence prevention, March for Our Lives.
During her time at AU, like many of the school’s students, Camerota took advantage of experiential learning opportunities. “I think that AU is so good at connecting students with real people in the real professional tracks that they want to get into, and I learned things in my internship that I still apply every day,” she said. She also worked at the campus television station during her undergraduate career, gaining hands-on experience on set.
Since graduating, Camerota has been a dedicated alumna. She is a mentor for SOC’s prestigious Alumni Mentorship Program and has hosted the New York Career Intensive program.
Camerota Steps Up to Expand Experiential Learning
In 2022, Camerota gave SOC a generous Change Can’t Wait campaign donation to create more robust and varied experiential learning programs. This includes internships, courses focused on networking and portfolio building, and study abroad opportunities. It also supported already existing programs, including the Investigative Reporting Workshop and Classroom in the Wild.
To hear from the award-winning, ground-breaking journalist on her career, AU experience and new book, Combat Love, join the SOC and Her Campus AU on April 2 at 3pm in the Media Innovation Lab (McKinley 100). Tickets now available.
This story was written by Sana Mamtaney, the Editor in Chief of Her Campus at AU.