If you’d like to write for The Reader, pitch me at books [at] washingtonmonthly.com or connect directly at hedwards [at] washingtonmonthly.com. We’re running the place with 1.5 full-time staffers so please be patient if I don’t reply lickety-split. (I will reply though!)
Before helping to launch 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, writing mostly for the Los Angeles Times, and also for The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and other publications. During that time, I reported from a half-dozen countries in the Middle East, thanks in part to a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Overseas Press Club Fellowship, while keeping a homebase in Sana’a, Yemen, and then 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, whoops). The book nonetheless remains relevant. It’s about a small provision, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), that shows up in nearly every international investment deal (still!) 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). I have two excellent little kids and a dog with serious FOMO.