Cathy Otten

Cathy Otten is a writer and author of With Ash On Their Faces: Yezidi Women and the Islamic State (OR books 2017). Cathy directs the Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence at Rutgers University, and is a Visiting Global Associate at Rutgers University’s Institute for Women's leadership. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bolton in the UK. The Los Angeles Review of Books described With Ash on Their Faces as: "The best kind of humanist journalism: lucid, transparent, grimly realistic.… (N)o book has covered it better.” She is a former reporter for the Independent and has written for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, BBC, Politico, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Vogue, American Scholar, and more. In 2018, she won the One World Media New Voice Award and was a finalist for the Kurt Schork courage in journalism award.