Annalisa Quinn

Hi! I’m a freelance journalist and book critic for NPR. I also write often for the New York Times and Financial Times. In the past few years, I’ve written front-page stories about the world’s biggest dictionary and the people working to reconstruct destroyed Stasi surveillance records, met the incarcerated men learning magic tricks by mail, dug into the unexpected life of New York’s plastic bodega bags, visited illegal pirate radio stations in London, taken the world’s longest flight, profiled writers and artists, and written about how language illuminates politics, from “witch hunts” to “influence.” 

In Fall 2021, I was based in Berlin as an Arthur F. Burns fellow. Before that, I was living in Munich reporting on the German response to COVID-19, thanks to a grant from the National Geographic Society. 

Here’s an interview with me about getting into book criticism. And you can find me on Twitter or reach me via email at annalisa.quinn [at] gmail.com.