Sarah Topol, an investigative journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Africa, and the former Soviet Union, will talk about her career experiences during an appearance at Middle Georgia State University (MGA) as part of the Master Lectures & Conversations Series. Her talk will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 4, in the Arts Complex Theater on the Macon Campus of MGA.
 
The event, planned to be conversational with audience members getting to ask questions, is free and open to the public. Topol’s appearance is sponsored by MGA’s Department of Continuing Education, the University Honors Program, and the Department of Media, Culture, and the Arts.
 
For over a decade, Topol has reported from more than two dozen countries. She has been a Nation Institute Investigative Fund grantee, an International Women’s Media Foundation fellow, as well as a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and has been published in the Atlantic, Businessweek, Esquire, Foreign Policy, Fortune, Harper’s, Matter, Newsweek, the New Republic, New York Magazine, Outside, Playboy, Popular Science, Politico, Slate, and Travel + Leisure. She has appeared on BBC, CNN, and NPR.
 
Topol won the 2012 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism for her coverage of the civil war in Libya for GQ. Her trip to meet the Bedouin tribesmen who kidnap foreign tourists in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for The Atlantic is featured in Best American Travel Writing 2013. Her story about a Siberian town besieged by bears is anthologized in Out There: The Wildest Stories Ever Featured in Outside Magazine. Her story for the New York Times Magazine about Nigerian boys abducted and forced to fight for Boko Haram received a citation from the Overseas Press Club for best international reporting on human rights. It was also a finalist for the 2018 Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma.
 
Topol moved to Cairo in 2008 and lived in Egypt for nearly five years. She relocated to Turkey in 2013 and was based in Istanbul for almost six years. She now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
 
MGA’s Master Lectures and Conversations Series is designed to promote public engagement with the great ideas of our times. These lectures, classes, and conversations are brought to the public by MGA and its intellectual partners.