Fariba Nawa

Fariba Nawa, an award-winning Afghan-American journalist, covers a range of issues and specializes in immigrant and Muslim communities in the United States and abroad. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area but has traveled extensively to the Middle East and South Asia. She lived and reported from Afghanistan from 2002 to 2007, and witnessed the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al Qaeda. She has also reported from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and Germany. She has a master's in Middle Eastern studies and journalism. Her work has appeared in the Sunday Times of London, Newsday, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, The Christian Science Monitor and numerous other publications. She also reports for radio, including National Public Radio (NPR) and is the author of the groundbreaking report, Afghanistan, Inc., and a contributing writer in the upcoming book Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, to be published in spring 2012 by Harvard University Press. Her essays have also been published in two other books, March to War and Women for Afghan Women. A frequent speaker on Middle East and South Asian issues, she has participated in talks at the World Affairs Council, major universities, and has been interviewed by prominent television and radio networks. Opium Nation, which has received critical acclaim, is her first book.