Masha Hamilton is the author of five acclaimed novels, most recently WHAT CHANGES EVERYTHING, which the Washington Post praised for its "elegantly wrought prose (which) conveys terror as well as tenderness" and 31 HOURS, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009. In October 2013, she finished 16 months working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy.

She is currently working as Communications Director for Concern Worldwide. She also founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women's Writing Project. She is the winner of the 2010 Women's National Book Association award, presented "to a living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts, and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation."

She began her career as a fulltime journalist, working in Maine, Indiana and New York City before being sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East, where she was news editor for five years, including the period of the first intefadeh, and then moving to Moscow, where she worked for five years during the collapse of Communism, reporting for the Los Angeles Times and NBC-Mutual Radio and writing a monthly column, "Postcards from Moscow." She also reported from Kenya in 2006, and from Afghanistan in 2004 and 2008.

Books by Masha Hamilton

The Distance Between Us

by Masha Hamilton

Caddie Blair, a war correspondent, loses her photojournalist lover and her detachment in one tragic moment during an unexpected ambush in the war-torn Middle East. An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos she feels and the consequences when she becomes too involved in the story she is covering.

Staircase of a Thousand Steps

by Masha Hamilton