Photo by Julia Nash
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AboutI am an author, journalist, and professor. My novel, Poison Girls, explores the intersection of drugs, wealth, politics and race when dozens of daughters from politically connected families die mysteriously from a strand of street heroin. My nonfiction book, Unveiled:The Hidden Lives of Nuns, explored the culture of the convent and why young, smart women choose to give up sex, money and men. My forthcoming novel, Map of My Escape, follows a female fugitive—a school shooting survivor—who is running from the FBI and the Chicago Police and must use old school methods in order to avoid capture. I've been a staff reporter and editor at a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Sun-Times. My reporting has won several investigative reporting awards, including the Harvard Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. After leaving full-time journalism, I ran communications for the University of Chicago's hospitals and the university's poverty center. Then I taught writing and journalism in a number of universities, most recently at Syracuse University. For several years, I've focused on reporting about media repression in post-Soviet states. From 2016-2017, I was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Kyiv, Ukraine teaching investigative reporting. In the fall of 2019, I returned to Ukraine as a Fulbright Specialist. In 2022, I was a Fulbright Scholar in post-Soviet Central Asia. Currently, I run communications for the Ukraine unit at USAID.
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