BATYA SWIFT YASGUR is a freelance writer of both nonfiction and fiction. She won the 1995 Mystery Writers of America’s Robert L. Fish Award for Best First Published Story and the Coalition of Alternatives in Jewish Education’s David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Award for short fiction. She is the author of America: A Freedom Country (published by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service), the project through which she met Hala, one of the sisters whose story is told in Behind the Burqa. She is also the coauthor of Women at Risk, a book about cervical cancer and the HPV virus.