Carla Power

As a journalist, Carla Power frequently covered stories about Muslims and Islamic culture but had never read the religion’s most fundamental text, the Quran. She decided to embark on a close-reading along with her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi. If the Oceans Were Ink is the chronicle of their unlikely friendship, their surprising findings, and the intersections between the Sheikh’s traditional Muslim worldview, and her own secular feminist outlook. The eye-opening book was a finalist for both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award.

Her forthcoming book  is a cutting-edge account of deradicalization. Bound by their joined quest to end extremism, four mothers whose children joined ISIS and other violent jihadi groups confide in Power. She also explores how everyday citizens are working against extremism, from an American judge who pilots a risky new method of handling terror suspects, to a Canadian imam running a jihadi detox program, to a former neo-Nazi who harnesses his own experience leaving a hateful movement to help jihadis leave theirs.

An American who grew up in both the Midwest and the Middle East, Power speaks on the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim societies with nuance and compassion. Whether speaking on the history of feminism in Islam or 21st century deradicalization tactics, she employs a fresh perspective to destroy long-held myths, open minds, and reveal startling connections between worlds that often seem hopelessly divided.

Power was a foreign correspondent for Newsweek and a contributor for Time Magazine, writing on the culture and politics of Islamic societies. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vogue and Foreign Policy, and has earned her an Overseas Press Club award, a Women in Media Award, and the National Women’s Political Caucus’s EMMA award. She holds a graduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford and degrees from Yale and Columbia. She travels to the United States frequently from England.