Before helping to start The Reader (launch date: Nov. 16, 2026), I was the Deputy Washington, DC Bureau Chief for TIME; a senior editor and national correspondent at TIME; an editor at the Washington Monthly; and a freelance reporter in the Middle East and the Caucasus. During my time abroad, I wrote for the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and other publications, reporting from a half-dozen countries, thanks in part to a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Overseas Press Club Fellowship. My home base was first in Sana’a, Yemen, and then in Tbilisi, Georgia. I started my career as an local news intern, briefly, at the New York Times, as a resident reporter at the Seattle Times.

My book, Shadow Courts: The Tribunals That Rule Global Trade was published by Columbia Global Reports in Sept. 2016 (right before NAFTA and the fledgling TPP were eviscerated). The book nonetheless remains relevant. It’s about a small provision, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), that still shows up in nearly every international investment deal and allows foreign investors to sue sovereign nations outside of their own court systems. The Kirkus Reviews: “Edwards does a great service for the public by turning the spotlight of disclosure on this dark corner of international relations.” (Check it out.)

I graduated from Yale (philosophy, history) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York (MA, politics).