Who is A. L. Bardach?
A.L. Bardach has written for virtually all the major media in the U.S. and the U.K. including The New York Times, the Washington Post, POLITICO, the Wall Street Journal's Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Bulwark, The New Republic, Newsweek/The Daily Beast as Writer-at-Large and Vanity Fair, where she was a reporter for a decade.
A prize-winning author and journalist, she has covered an eclectic range of political and cultural issues - from crime reporting to elections to matters of faith and belief to the nature of celebrity. The Columbia Journalism Review has called her "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami."
She is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, as well as the editor of The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro and Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion and served on The Brookings Institution's Cuba Study Project. 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. In 1995, she won the PEN USA Award for Best Journalism for her reporting on Mexico in Vanity Fair magazine; the year previous, her Vanity Fair coverage of the impact of Islamic fundamentalism in the West was a finalist for the PEN USA Journalism Award.
An intrepid reporter known for securing hard-to-get admissions from Fidel Castro to E. Howard Hunt, she has interviewed several dozen world leaders and personalities. She is frequently seen and heard on television and radio and has appeared on 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Dateline, CNN, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor, Charlie Rose, National Public Radio and PRI's Marketplace. She created and wrote the Global Buzz column for Newsweek International and the Interrogation column for Slate.
She started the Global Journalism class at University of California, Santa Barbara and is on the board of UCSB's Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media. She was also a Resident Scholar with the Orfalea Center at UCSB. Several of her articles have been anthologized in KILLED: Journalism Too Hot To Print and Mexico in Mind (Vintage).
In the mid 1990s, she began her research into Vivekananda, the iconic Indian sage, making her way through nine volumes of his writings, publishing pieces about him in the Sunday New York Times and in the Sunday magazine of the Wall Street Journal.
JOURNALISM**
New York Times
New York Times - Op-Ed/Sunday Review
New York Times Magazine
New York Times T Magazine
POLITICO
Slate - Interrogation column
Talk - Contributing Writer
Vanity Fair - Contributing Editor
The New Republic
The New Yorker
Los Angeles Times - Op-Ed
Washington Post - Outlook
Washington Post - Book Review
Wall Street Journal Magazine
The Atlantic
The Financial Times
The Guardian
Newsweek/The Daily Beast (Writer-at-Large)
Los Angeles Times Magazine
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
Conde Nast Traveler
Los Angeles MagazineThe Huffington Post
San Francisco Chronicle
Proceso
The Nation
George - Special Correspondent
WET Magazine - Liberal Arts Editor
Santa Barbara Magazine
Newsweek International - Global Buzz column
Pacific Standard
S.B. Independent
New York Daily News
L.A. Weekly - Crime Editor
BOOKS
Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington (Scribner 2009)
SIN FIDEL (Grijalbo 2012)
The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro/Cartas del Presidio - co-editor and Preface (Nation/Avalon 2007)
Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (Random House/Vintage/ Penguin U.K./ RH Mondadori - 2002/2004)
Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion - Editor and Preface (Whereabouts Press - 2002)
Vicki: Careless People in the Reagan Administration co-author (St. Martins 1986)
ANTHOLOGIES
Mexico in Mind - Edited by Maria Finn (Vintage - 2006)
KILLED: Journalism Too Hot To Print - edited by David Wallis (Nation/Avalon - 2004)
AWARDS
2010 - Miami Herald - Ten Best Books of 2009 for Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington
1995 - PEN USA Award for Journalism for "Mexico's Poet Rebel" - Vanity Fair, July 1994
1994 - (Finalist) PEN USA Award for Journalism for "Tearing Off The Veil" - Vanity Fair, August 1993
2001 - (Gold) City and Regional Magazine Award for Profile "The Last Tycoon" - Los Angeles Magazine, April 2000
2003 - (Finalist) New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism for Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana
2002 - Los Angeles Times - Ten Best Books of 2002 for Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana
2003 - (Finalist) PEN USA Award for Best Nonfiction for Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana
2005- City and Regional Magazine (Silver) Award for Reporting for "Taming the Hydra-Headed Carnivorous Tabloid Beast" Los Angeles Magazine, September 2004
2005 - (Finalist) PEN USA Award for Best Journalism for "Taming the Hydra-Headed Carnivorous Tabloid Beast" Los Angeles Magazine, September 2004
AFFILIATIONS
CBS Special Correspondent on Fidel Castro
Resident Fellow - Orfalea Center at University of California, Santa Barbara
Advisory Board - Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television & New Media at UCSB
Writers Guild of America / AFTRA / SAG
PEN America Center/PEN USA
The Brookings Institution - Cuba Study Project
The Pacific Council on International Policy
EDUCATION
New York University School of the Arts
UCLA & SUNY at Stony Brook
Hunter College B.A./M.A. in English Literature
MEDIA APPEARANCES
60 Minutes / 60 Minutes II
Good Morning America
The Today Show
Nightline
Morning Joe
ABC World News
National Public Radio
All Things Considered, Tell Me More, Diane Rehm et al.
PRI'S Marketplace & The Takeaway
CNN News/ International Hour
CNN w/ Don Lemon
CNN w/ Kira Phillips
PBS Tavis Smiley Show
BBC TV with Matt Frei
BBC Radio
BBC World - Business Matters
ABC's Late Night Live w/ Phillip Adams (Aust.)
MSNBC News w/ Brian Williams
NBC's Dateline
PBS Charlie Rose
FOX Rivera Live/ Fox News
FOX The O'Reilly Factor
CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Co.
Discovery Channel
A&E - Biography/ Pacifica Radio
MSNBC Hardball w/ Chris Matthews
Democracy Now w/ Amy Goodman
C-SPAN Book TV
MSNBC -Dennis Miller; Internight
KCRW's Which Way L.A.? w/ Warren Olney
NPR/KCRW To the Point
KPCC Take Two
KPCC w/ Patt Morrison
Voice of America
NPR/KCRW Press Play
APPOINTMENTS
2007- 2010: The Brookings Institution - Cuba Study Project
June 1998; June 2010: Commencement Speaker University of California (Santa Barbara)
March, 1998: Speaker/Panelist Florida State Bar Media Conference
1997: Judge (Journalism) PEN USA Literary Awards
1999, 2000, 2005, 2006: Judge (Current Affairs) Los Angeles Times Book Awards
March, 1999: Expert Witness on Investigative Journalism in the Larry Matthews trial - Federal Court, Maryland
2000- 2011: Global Journalism seminar University of California Santa Barbara
October 2014 - Columbia University J School conference "Covering Cuba"
INTERVIEWS
Talk Magazine
Angelica Houston and Robert Graham
Ed and Dana Ruscha
Santa Barbara Magazine
Jeff Greenfield
Playboy/WET/Oui/High Times 1978-82
Jake La Motta
Johnny Lydon
Bobby Beausoleil/Christopher Lee
Paul Morrissey - Kenneth Anger
Tim Hardin - Marianne Faithfull
SCREENPLAYS
The Land - Rastar, IndieProd, Fox
Composure - Warners; Fox
Reclaimed Warners (Director: Arthur Penn)
The Canvas - Columbia Pictures
Backtrack - Vestron (Director: Dennis Hopper)
Hope Street - Columbia Pictures
MOVIES OF THE WEEK
The Legacy NBC (Gaylord Prod.)
Sorry Wrong Number CBS (Jack Grossbard Prods.)
Johnny DeSoto
** incomplete, please see News Stories
