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Vanessa M. Gezari

Vanessa M. Gezari is a Washington-based writer who covers national and international affairs with a focus on South Asia, West Africa and Afghanistan. Before moving to Washington, she was a national writer for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, traveling the Gulf Coast to document the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and reporting on disaster, terrorism and human resilience from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Russia and England. In 2007, she traveled to Liberia on an International Reporting Project fellowship to write about the rehabilitation of child soldiers.

Previously, she freelanced from New Delhi and Kabul for nearly three years, covering Afghanistan on assignment for the Chicago Tribune from 2002-2003. Her stories have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post Magazine and Slate. She has a B.A. in English from Yale.

Past work:

Where to now? 2008 was a spectacular year for women in politics. But the reality is that the race has just begun. The Washington Post

Pakistan under pressure: Militants are gaining territory – and strength – with astonishing speed (Slate)

Cracking Open: Michael Short knows he was wrong to sell crack cocaine, but he questions whether he needed 15 years in prison to learn his lesson. Now some of the politicians who helped put him there are wondering, too.

Losing hope: What happened to Afghanistan’s stubborn optimism? (Slate)

Killing our fathers, raising our sons: Thousands of child soldiers tread an uneasy middle ground in Liberia, a country torn between learning from its past or forgetting it in trying to build a future amid utter ruin

Liberia recovers from war (Slate)