she described the experience: "I wrote the entire book not long after my brother died. It was like an obsession. I lived in a tiny basement apartment in Columbia, Missouri, unemployed for a year. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing. It was a very private experience. I almost feel that the book wasn't so much written by me, but channeled through me." Salak now writes regularly for National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic, and other magazines about her travels to places which include Iran, Rwanda, Libya, Burma, Borneo, Uganda and Peru. In 2003, she convinced some Ukrainian gun-runners to fly her to the Democratic Republic of the Congo so she could report on the war. Salak stayed in the Congolese town of Bunia, which was taken over by child soldiers, an experience she described as "an endless stream of the worst, most inconceivable acts of inhumanity". She received a PEN literary award for her article about that experience. Her articles have also appeared in publications that include the New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, The Washington Post, and Backpacker, and her work has appeared five times in Best American Travel Writing. Her fiction was selected for Best New American Voices (judged by Charles Baxter). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various anthologies, including Adrenaline 2002: The Year's Best Stories of Adventure and Survival, The Best Women's Travel Writing, and Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction. Awards Salak received the PEN Award for journalism in 2004 and has appeared five times in Best American Travel Writing. In 2005, the National Geographic Society awarded Salak with an Emerging Explorer Award. She has been awarded two Lowell Thomas Gold Awards for Best Foreign Article and Environmental Reporting. She has been awarded the AWP/ Prague Fellowship Award in creative nonfiction. Accomplishments Kira Salak is described by the National Geographic Society's website as being the "first documented person to kayak solo down the Niger river" and by the New York Times as "a real-life Lara Croft". Salak has been selected by the Library of Congress for its "Women Who Dare" publications, which highlight the world's top women explorers and leaders. She was the first woman to cross Papua New Guinea, following the route taken by Australian patrol officer Ivan Champion in 1927. First person to kayak up the Niger River Media Salak was profiled on the CBS