Janet Biehl (b. 1953) is a writer associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. In 1986 she attended the Institute for Social Ecology and there began a collaborative relationship with Bookchin, working intensively with him over the next two decades in the explication of social ecology from their home in Burlington, Vermont.[1] From 1987 to 2000 she and Bookchin co-wrote and co-published the theoretical newsletter Green Perspectives, later renamed Left Green Perspectives.[2]
She is the editor and compiler of The Murray Bookchin Reader (1997)[3]; the author of The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (1998) and Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics (1991); and coauthor (with Peter Staudenmaier) of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (1995). She has also authored numerous articles about or related to Bookchin’s thought, especially libertarian municipalism, social ecology and eco-feminism. Bookchin considered her The Murray Bookchin Reader to be the best introduction to his work.
In 2001 she retired from political activity to care for Bookchin in his old age.[4] Since his death in July 2006 she been working on a biography of Bookchin. She is interested in hearing from those who knew him and have stories, insights, or other recollections that they would be willing to share.
In 2011, Janet Biehl, in a statement published on the ISE Blog's initial post "Announcing the New ISE Blog," broke with Social Ecology and its continuation by Murray Bookchin, Communalism, making publicly known that, since the end of the 1990s, she had privately reverted to her pre-1987 political identity, which was, as Biehl put it, "what leftists call a social democrat".[5]