Ann Louise Bardach


Ann Louise Bardach is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review having interviewed people such as Fidel Castro, Juanita Castro, Luis Posada Carriles, E. Howard Hunt, Orlando Bosch and Felix Rodriguez.
Bardach's book Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington was cited as the authoritative work about Cuba under Raúl Castro and one of The Miami Herald's "Ten Best Books of 2009". Earlier publications include Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. Her journalism has been anthologized in KILLED: Journalism Too Hot To Print and Mexico in Mind. Bardach was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair for ten years and has written for The New York Times, POLITICO, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Financial Times, The New Republic and Los Angeles Times. She has guested on many US television programs including 60 Minutes, Today, Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, CNN, The O'Reilly Factor, Charlie Rose and is frequently heard on NPR and BBC. Bardach started the "Global Buzz" column for Newsweek International and the Interrogation column for Slate.

Early career

Bardach made a name for herself as a crime reporter in New York City in the late 1970s, beginning with her coverage of the murder of Sid Vicious's girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Bardach's crime reporting also includes coverage of Charles Manson, JonBenét Ramsey, Vicki Morgan, and Ronni Chasen. Bardach has also been involved in the New York punk music scene, having conducted interviews with members of The Ramones and Sex Pistols.
In the mid 1990s, she began her research into Vivekananda, a 19th-century Indian Hindu monk. In 2011–12, Bardach published two pieces about Vivekananda – in the Sunday New York Times and in the Sunday magazine of The Wall Street Journal. Following those publications, she started to write a full biography of this religious figure.

Awards

In 1995 Bardach won the PEN USA Award for Journalism for her reporting on Mexican politics, and was a finalist in 1994 for her coverage of women in Islamic countries. Her book Cuba Confidential was a finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism and the PEN USA Award for Best Non-fiction, and named one of "Ten Best Books of 2002" by the Los Angeles Times. Bardach was a finalist for the 2005 PEN USA award for Journalism for her story on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's ties with the tabloid press, published in Los Angeles magazine.
Bardach started the international journalism class at University of California, Santa Barbara and is on the board of PEN USA and UCSB's Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media. and is a Resident Scholar at UCSB's Orfalea Center. She is also the editor of The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro as well as Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion and she serves on the Brookings Institution's Cuba Study Project.

Books