Photo by Julia Nash

About 

My latest 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. My debut 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 explores the culture of the convent and why young, smart women  choose to give up sex, money and men.  .

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. I've also run communications for the University of Chicago's hospitals and the University's poverty center. I've taught writing and journalism in a number of universities, most recently at Syracuse University. From 2016 to 2023, I focused my reporting on media repression in post-Soviet states. During that time, I was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar (State Department program) in Kyiv, Ukraine; Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine; Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. After I returned to the United States, I ran communications for the Ukraine unit at USAID.