Kira Salak (born September 4, 1971) is an American writer, adventurer, and journalist known for her travels in Mali and Papua New Guinea. She has written two books of nonfiction and a book of fiction based on her travels and is a contributing editor at National Geographic magazine. Biography Early life Kira Salak was born on September 4, 1971, in a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Her mother was a waitress and her father repaired mainframe computers. When Salak was 13, her parents sent her to Wayland Academy, a boarding school in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where she participated in cross-country activities and set a state level track record when she was 14. Though she began training for National and Olympic trials, she dropped out of the sport and decided to travel instead. Kira Salak received her B.F.A. in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing (fiction) from the University of Arizona. In 2004, she graduated from the University of Missouri, with a PhD in English; her two areas of specialization were 20th century American prose literature and travel literature. Career At the age of 24, Salak took a year off from graduate school to backpack around Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Island nation, and became the first American woman to cross the country. Her first book, Four Corners: One Woman’s Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea, describes that journey. After the book was published, an editor of National Geographic Adventure magazine asked her to write for the magazine and Salak's career as a freelance writer began. Salak gained a reputation for being a tough adventurer, surviving war zones, coup attempts, and life-threatening bouts with malaria and cholera (the New York Times described her as a "tough, real life Lara Croft" and Book Magazine described her as "the gutsiest – and some say, craziest – woman adventurer of our day.") Several of Salak's short stories have been published in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Quarterly West and Witness. One story, "Beheadings", about a war correspondent's search for her lost brother, is published in the anthology Best New American Voices. According to Salak, she started writing at the age of six. After the death of her brother, Marc, in 2005, Salak took a year off from her magazine work to write her first novel The White Mary. In an interview,