Hannah Dreier

Hannah Dreier grew up in San Francisco. After completing high school at The Urban School of San Francisco, she graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and spent the first years of her career at The San Jose Mercury News.[1]

Dreier joined Associated Press as a politics reporter in the Sacramento bureau and later covered the business of gambling from Las Vegas. She was the Venezuela correspondent for Associated Press for three years, moving to Caracas in 2014 amid a nationwide protest movement, and has told the story of the country's unraveling from inside prisons, hospitals and factories. Her 2016 "Venezuela Undone" series illustrated Venezuela’s social and economic collapse through deeply reported accounts of ordinary citizens struggling to survive and was recognized by the Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest, the Michael Kelly Award,[2] the Gerald Loeb Award for International business journalism,[3] and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.[1]

Following the narcosobrinos affair which saw president Nicolás Maduro's nephews arrested in the United States for drug trafficking, Dreier was detained by SEBIN (Bolivarian Intelligence Service) agents in Sabaneta, Barinas. Agents threatened her during an interrogation, saying they would behead her like ISIL did to James Foley and said that they would let her go for a kiss. Finally, agents said that they wanted to coerce the United States to exchange Maduro's nephews for Dreier, accusing her of being a spy and sabotaging the Venezuelan economy.[4]

A piece in the Columbia Journalism Review highlighted Dreier's work translating the Venezuela crisis for foreign readers. "Dreier has helped the rest of us understand how, why and what, exactly, is taking place in the country. She’s also gained a huge following on social media, where readers catch a glimpse into everyday life there—the quirky, surprising and alarming—sometimes from the window of her apartment," it said. [5]

In 2017, Dreier joined ProPublica as a reporter covering immigration.[6] There, she wrote an investigative series about the gang MS-13.[7]

Her stories have been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, ASNE, the National Magazine Awards, the Livingston Awards, and the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism. In 2016 she was the recipient of the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for her coverage of the recurring turmoil in Venezuela.[1][6][8][9][10]

In 2019, Dreier won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.[11]

Dreier's work has been republished in collections including The Best American Magazine Writing and Best American Newspaper Narratives.[12] [13]

• Personal website
• Venezuelan Undone, A Year Chaos in Tweet Associated Press Interactives
• Politico interview, "What’s It Like to See a Democracy Destroyed?"