Inara Verzemnieks

Inara Verzemnieks is a journalist and author based in the USA.

She worked as a newspaper journalist for 13 years, writing regularly for the New York Times and the Atlantic. During this time, she won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Inara says that she is especially interested in stories that cannot be accessed unless the writer fully immerses themselves in the lives they are trying to understand.

In 2017, Inara published a memoir, Among the Living and the Dead, which retraces the steps of her grandmother and great-aunt in the wake of the Second World War, and recounts her own journey back to the remote Latvian village where her family were torn apart. The book was described by the Washington Post as ‘important’ and ‘exquisitely written’.

A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Non-fiction Writing Programme, Inara now teaches creative non-fiction there as an assistant professor.