Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning New York-based journalist and commentator and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. Her essays make her one of only a few writers whose work appears regularly in both the Arab and U.S. media.

Her opinion pieces have appeared frequently in the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post and the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper and she has also published opeds in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Egypt's al-Dostour and Lebanon's Daily Star. She recently became a columnist for the major Danish daily Politiken and the online commentary site www.saudidebate.com.

Over the past year, she has lectured and taken part in conferences across the United States as well as in Canada, Denmark, Dubai, Egypt, Greece, Ireland, Morocco, The Netheralands and Qatar. In November, she was named Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo, her alma mater.

Ms Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a correspondent for Reuters and she reported from the region for The Guardian and U.S. News and World Report.

Since she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms Eltahawy's views on Arab and Muslim issues have become sought after by producers and college campuses alike. She has been a guest analyst on ABC Nightline, PBS Frontline, BBC TV and Radio, The Doha Debates, CNN, Al-Arabiya, Al-Hurra, MSNBC, VOA, Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and various NPR shows.

She was born in Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel and is currently based in New York. She is a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America.

In 2006, the Next Century Foundation awarded Ms Eltahawy its Cutting Edge Prize for distinguished contribution to the coverage of the Middle East and in recognition of her “continuing efforts to sustain standards of journalism that would help reduce levels of misunderstanding”. In 2003, she came in 2nd place for commentary in the Public Radio News Directors Inc. Awards.

She is available to speak on a variety of topics. Contact her at info@monaeltahawy.com. For more biographical material, visit her page at www.harrywalker.com