Molly O'Toole is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, working on "The Route," a nonfiction book on global migration through the Americas to the United States, for Crown Publishing, a Penguin Random House imprint, and developing an accompanying podcast. She most recently was an immigration and security reporter for The Los Angeles Times, and a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, George Washington University, and the Logan Nonfiction Program. She has also taught at Cornell University and the Poynter Institute. She previously was a senior reporter at Foreign Policy and The Atlantic’s Defense One, and an editor at The Huffington Post.

From Latin America, West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, O’Toole has written and worked for outlets such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Newsweek, The Intercept, the Associated Press, Reuters, and more. She was awarded the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting in 2020 with This American Life and Emily Green. Her work has also been recognized by the Livingston Awards, the National Press Club, the Charles Rappleye Investigative Award, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Silvers Grants for Work in Progress, among others. She is a graduate of Cornell and New York University, and is based in Washington, D.C., but she will always be a Californian.