Molly O'Toole is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, working on The Route (Crown Publishing 2025), a nonfiction book on global migration through the Americas. She recently was an immigration and security reporter for The Los Angeles Times, as well as a fellow at George Washington University and Cornell University. From Latin America to South Asia, O’Toole has written for outlets such as Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Reuters, and the Associated Press.
She was awarded the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting in 2020 with This American Life, and in 2024, she served on the Pulitzer jury for Explanatory Reporting. Her work has also been recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, Livingston Awards, and the National Press Club, among others. She lives in Washington, D.C. but will always be a Californian.
At MacDowell, O’Toole worked on her forthcoming nonfiction book The Route. She wrote extensively and completed “perhaps the most difficult chapter in the book,” for which she followed a group of migrants from South America to the United States. The book is set to be published in 2025, building on the immigration coverage for which O’Toole was awarded the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting in 2020. After MacDowell, O’Toole will be a fellow at the Wilson Center and New America in Washington, D.C.
Portrait by Beth Mickalonis
