Bio

Deena Guzder is a freelance journalist based in New York City who has reported on human rights issues across the world. Guzder is currently finishing her nonfiction book, A Higher Calling (Chicago Review Press, 2011), and is represented by the William Clark Associates literary agency. In May 2008, Guzder was the youngest student to complete a dual-degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and School of International & Public Affairs. She has received journalism grants from the Carnegie & Knight Foundations to report on theocracy and democracy in Iran; the Scripps Howard Foundation to report on low-caste “untouchables” in India; and, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to report on commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking in Thailand.  Her articles have appeared in Time, National Geographic–Traveler, Washington Post, United Press International, Reuters, Indian Express, Mother Jones, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Global Post, Huffington Post, Common Dreams, and elsewhere.  Guzder has been interviewed by National Public Radio (NPR), NY 1 News, New York Magazine, CNN, Interfaith Voices, WPKN Radio (Bridgeport, CT.), WPKM (Montauk, NY.), WZBC (Boston, MA.), KPFA-FM (San Francisco, CA.), KBOO 90.7 FM Community Radio (Portland, OR.), and the 2008 documentary In Complete World.  She declined an interview request from Fox “News”.

Guzder is proud to serve on the board of the Blossom Hill Foundation, a nonprofit seeking to end the cycle of violence for children affected by war.  She also runs a separate fledgling nonprofit organization: Students Together in Tackling Child Hunger (S.T.I.T.C.H). The organization buys hand-embroidered, georgette shirts wholesale from local retailers in India, who uphold ethical labor practices, and sells them for quadruple the price. All of the profit goes to UNICEF so children, instead of corporations, benefit from inequality. The S.T.I.T.C.H project is in the process of gaining the IRS classification of 501(c)(3), a “charitable nonprofit.”  As an undergraduate, Guzder attended Oberlin College, Columbia University, and the University of Cape Town.  She tripled majored in Peace & Conflict Studies, Politics, and English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

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“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
- Ernesto Che Guevara

“If you’re outraged at conditions, then you can’t possibly be free or happy until you devote all your time to changing them and do nothing but that.”
- César Chávez

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
- Noam Chomsky

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein

“Dear Yale University: Thank you for your offer of admissions; however, since you have an odious record of producing awful presidents, I regret I must decline. Tsk.”
- Lotsa love, Deena Guzder