Lauren Frayer
Lauren Frayer covers India for NPR News. In June 2018, she opened a new NPR bureau in India's biggest city, its financial center, and the heart of Bollywood—Mumbai.
Before moving to India, Lauren was a regular freelance contributor to NPR for seven years, based in Madrid. During that time, she substituted for NPR bureau chiefs in Seoul, London, Istanbul, Islamabad, and Jerusalem. She also served as a guest host of Weekend Edition Sunday.
In Europe, Lauren chronicled the economic crisis in Spain & Portugal, where youth unemployment spiked above 50%. She profiled a Portuguese opera singer-turned protest leader, and a 90-year-old survivor of the Spanish Civil War, exhuming her father's remains from a 1930s-era mass grave. From Paris, Lauren reported live on NPR's Morning Edition, as French police moved in on the Charlie Hebdo terror suspects. In the fall of 2015, Lauren spent nearly two months covering the flow of migrants & refugees across Hungary & the Balkans – and profiled a Syrian rapper among them. She interviewed a Holocaust survivor who owed his life to one kind stranger, and managed to get a rare interview with the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders – by sticking her microphone between his bodyguards in the Hague.
Farther afield, she introduced NPR listeners to a Pakistani TV evangelist, a Palestinian surfer girl in Gaza, and K-pop performers campaigning in South Korea's presidential election.
Lauren has also contributed to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the BBC.
Her international career began in the Middle East, where she was an editor on the Associated Press' Middle East regional desk in Cairo, and covered the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Syria and southern Lebanon. In 2007, she spent a year embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, an assignment for which the AP nominated her and her colleagues for a Pulitzer Prize.
On a break from journalism, Lauren drove a Land Rover across Africa for a year, from Cairo to Cape Town, sleeping in a tent on the car's roof. She once made the front page of a Pakistani newspaper, simply for being a woman commuting to work in Islamabad on a bicycle.
Born and raised in a suburb of New York City, Lauren holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from The College of William & Mary in Virginia. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, rusty French and Arabic, and is now learning Hindi.
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Turkish linguist Sevan Nisanyan was jailed for breaking zoning laws. His supporters say he was punished for his writings. He escaped and fled to Greece. "I feel relieved and liberated," he tells NPR. -
Most in the terrorist cell were employed or in school and showed no signs of radicalization. Their skill at avoiding detection sends chills down the spines of authorities working to prevent attacks. -
When Turkish children head back to school, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution. The government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum. -
Many of the Syrians in Turkey are educated professionals who are underemployed, working off the books for low pay. A government program is trying to change that, but things are moving slowly. -
Over the past year, Ankara has expropriated nearly 1,000 Turkish companies — from carpet makers to a popular brand of baklava. They're accused of having ties to organizers of last year's failed coup. -
Nearly 500 people — mostly military officers — went on trial Tuesday, charged with trying to overthrow the government in last year's failed coup. Ankara has detained some 50,000 people since then.
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The Labour Party leader is 68 and riding a wave of support from young voters. "He's like the Bernie Sanders of the U.K., but with a very refined accent," says a staffer who once worked for Sanders. -
After a disastrous June election in which her party lost parliamentary seats, many wonder how long the prime minister will stay in office. The opposition says May is heading a "zombie government." -
Some Crawley residents who want to see Britain out of the European Union doubt if politicians will ever make Brexit a reality. Others worry the town could face labor shortages if immigrants leave. -
London's famed Borough Market was the site of a terror attack last month. Upscale restaurants say tourist bookings are down, but locals are packing the market in a show of solidarity.
