Rachel Louise Snyder

Rachel Louise Snyder is a writer and radio commentator. She is also the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. An excerpt of the book – “Dreams of Distant Factories” – aired on public radio’s This American Life and was awarded the 2006 Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club. Fugitive Denim was also featured on more than two dozen public radio programs across the US including “Marketplace, the World,” and “The Leonard Lopate Show.” Library Journal named it one of the best business books of 2007.

In 1998, Snyder spent two months traveling through Tibet, India and Nepal, where she interviewed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and charted the progress of one refugee family's traumatic trek from Lhasa to Kathmandu to Dharamsala. Later that same year, Snyder traveled to Honduras to cover relief efforts after Hurricane Mitch. In 2000, a book she edited called First They Killed My Father became an international bestseller and has now been translated in 19 languages. During the millennium, Snyder drove across Cuba watching the island's social and economic revolution. At the same time, she began spots as an essayist on NPR's "All Things Considered." In 2001, her novella, The Light At San Miguel Dolores Church, became the first book ever serialized on Chicago's NPR and she was nominated for General Excellence by the Society of Professional Journalists.

After 9/11, Snyder covered the war in Afghanistan and the future of Afghan women by spending her entire time camped out with the women held at the Kabul Jail for Women. She also covered Aceh, Indonesia in the weeks and months following the tsunami. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in National Geographic, Men’s Journal, Jane, Travel and Leisure, the New Republic, the New York Times magazine and Glamour. She is also a contributor to public radio’s “Marketplace” and “All Things Considered.”