Wright has reported from more than 140 countries on seven continents for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times,The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Sunday Times of London, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, CBS News, The Christian Science Monitor, and others. She did several tours as a foreign correspondent based in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and as a roving foreign correspondent in Latin America and Asia. She formerly covered U.S. foreign policy and national security for The Washington Post. She is currently a columnist for The New Yorker. Wright has also been a fellow at Yale, Duke, Stanford, Dartmouth, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California. Wright’s most recent book is “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic world.” It was selected as the Best Book on International Affairs by the Overseas Press Club in 2011. Among her other books, “Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East” was selected by both The New York Times and The Washington Post as one of the most notable books of the year. Her other books include “The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran”, "Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam", “Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World,” “In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade”, “The Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Policy,” and “The Islamists: Who They Really Are”. As an analyst, Wright has appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “The Today Show,” and “Nightly News”; CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “Morning News” and “Evening News”; ABC’s “This Week” and “Nightline”; the PBS “Newshour,” “Washington Week in Review,” and “Frontline”; NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “Weekend Edition,” “To the Point” and “The Diane Rehm Show”; HBO’s “Real Time”; MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Hardball”; CNN’s “GPS,” “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” and “Anderson Cooper 360”; and Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report”; and C-Span’s “Booknotes,” among many others.
Awards and honors
The American Academy of Diplomacy selected Wright as the journalist of the year for her "distinguished reporting and analysis of international affairs" in 2004. She was also awarded the U.N. Correspondents Association Gold Medal for analysis and coverage of international affairs in 2003, and the National Press Club award for diplomatic reporting in 2004. She received the National Magazine Award for her reportage from Iran in The New Yorker and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for coverage of African wars in 1976. She is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant. She was awarded an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1975 to live in Africa and write about the dismantling of Portugal's African empire. On May 2, 2015, she was awarded an Honorary Degree as Doctor of Humane Letters from her alma mater, the University of Michigan.
