Katherine Boo was born on August 12, 1964 and grew up in the Washington D. C. area. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University.
She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction (2012), as well as nonfiction prizes from PEN, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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