Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Kim Barker grew up in Montana, Wyoming, and Oregon, and graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. She worked at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, for four years, and The Seattle Times for two years, winning awards for her investigative reporting. In 2001, at age 30, she joined the Chicago Tribune, and began making reporting trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan the next year. Barker was the Tribune’s South Asia bureau chief from 2004 to 2009. She was then awarded the Council on Foreign Relations’ Edward R. Murrow press fellowship to study Afghanistan and Pakistan. She now lives in New York City, where she works as a reporter at ProPublica.

‘Remarkable … Kim Barker is a sort of Tina Fey character, who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline rush of war … [She has] discovered a voice … that enables her to capture both the serious and the seriously absurd conditions in Af-Pak, and the surreal deal of being a female reporter there … [Barker] has written an account of her experiences covering Afghanistan and Pakistan that manages to be hilarious and harrowing, witty and illuminating, all at the same time.’