Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, and other publications. She studied philosophy at Brown University, and has been a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library (2008-2009); a staff editor of the New York Times op-ed page; a reporter for the Boston Globe; acting executive editor of the American Prospect; and a senior editor and writer for Lingua Franca. She is the author, most recently, of Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran (Riverhead, 2016).