 Perlez won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for coverage of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a lead member of the group of New York Times reporters included in the prize for international reporting that year.Born in London, Perlez grew up in Australia, and graduated from the University of Sydney.In 1967, she traveled to China with a group of Australian students who went for a vacation but ended up spending three weeks in the middle of the Cultural Revolution.