Tatiana Schlossberg, a Kennedy scion and granddaughter of the late president John F. Kennedy, has died at the age of 35, just weeks after announcing her terminal cancer diagnosis.
The JFK Library Foundation announced Schlossberg’s death in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the statement reads. The post was signed “George, Edwin and Josephine Moran, Ed, Caroline, Jack, Rose and Rory.”
Schlossberg is survived by her husband, George Moran, their three-year-old son and their one-year-old daughter. She’s also survived by her parents, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, her brother Jack Schlossberg, and her sister Rose Schlossberg, who is married to Rory McAuliffe.
Her cousin, Maria Shriver, also released a statement Tuesday honoring “sweet, beloved Tatiana.”
“Tatiana was a great journalist, and she used her words to educate others about the earth and how to save it. She created a beautiful life with her extraordinary husband George, and children Eddie and Josie. She fought like a warrior. She was valiant, strong, courageous,” Shriver wrote on X (Twitter).
“Those of us left behind will make sure Eddie and Josie know what a beautiful, courageous spirit their mother was and will always be. She takes after her extraordinary mother, Caroline,” Shriver later added.
Schlossberg revealed she had been diagnosed with a rare type of acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer, in a New Yorker essay published on November 22, the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather’s assassination.
In the essay, she recounted her disbelief in her diagnosis, as the disease is mostly seen in older people.
“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me. I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick,” Schlossberg wrote.
Schlossberg was diagnosed shortly after giving birth to her daughter in May 2024. Her doctors noticed her white blood cell count was elevated just hours after she delivered her daughter.
“Everyone thought it was something to do with the pregnancy or the delivery. After a few hours, my doctors thought it was leukemia,” she wrote.
She recalled feeling worried that her young children would not remember her after her death.
“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe. My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me,” Schlossberg wrote.
“My son might have a few memories, but he’ll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears. I didn’t ever really get to take care of my daughter — I couldn’t change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants,” she added.
In her essay, Schlossberg also criticized her cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who took office in February after he was nominated by President Donald Trump.
“I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” she wrote.
She decried his cuts to research funding, particularly for “mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers.”
Other members of the family have also criticized the Department of Health and Human Services leader, including Caroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg, who announced plans to run for Congress as a Democrat in New York last month.
Shriver, a journalist and the former first lady of California, praised her cousin’s New Yorker essay.
“If you can only read one thing today, please make/take the time for this extraordinary piece of writing by my cousin Caroline’s extraordinary daughter Tatiana,” Shriver wrote last month. “Tatiana is a beautiful writer, journalist, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.”
Schlossberg was born on May 5, 1990, in New York City. Her mother, the daughter of the 35th president and first lady Jackie Kennedy, has served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan and Australia. Her father is a designer and artist.
Schlossberg earned her bachelor’s degree in history at Yale University before attending the University of Oxford, where she earned a master’s degree in American history.
She interned for The New York Times in 2014, before she was hired as a staff writer for the outlet’s metro section, and later its science section. Henry Fountain, a long-time climate reporter and editor for The New York Times, told The Washington Post Schlossberg was a “total delight” who “just researched her butt off on stories.”
Schlossberg went on to work as a freelance environmental journalist, focusing on the impacts of climate change. She published several stories in The Washington Post, including an investigation into the impacts of climate change on cranberry farmers.
In 2019, Schlossberg also published Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have.
The work earned her the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award. The award’s judges wrote that Schlossberg’s readers “will find solace, humor and a route to feeling empowered with possibilities for positive change, rather than drained by an accumulation of bad news.”
In her New Yorker essay, Schlossberg said she has told her son about her love of writing.
“My son knows that I am a writer and that I write about our planet. Since I’ve been sick, I remind him a lot, so that he will know that I was not just a sick person,” she wrote.
Schlossberg also revealed that, if she had not gotten sick, she would’ve written a book “about the oceans — their destruction, but also the possibilities they offer.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul honored Schlossberg in a statement on Tuesday.
“My heart goes out to the Kennedy family. I will never forget the images of Caroline Kennedy as a child in the White House before she lost her father. To now lose her own daughter to this terrible disease is unspeakable. I’m praying for all who knew and loved her,” she wrote on X.
