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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The Federal Aviation Administration prohibited U.S. carriers from overflying Iran "until further notice, due to heightened military activities and increased political tensions."
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A collection of Indian gems, jewelry and artifacts is expected to fetch more than $115 million — which would break a record set by Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry collection. -
India and Pakistan went to the brink of war in February. But Sunday's match "should create love and affection," says a Pakistani fan. "We should compete, but compete for the betterment of society." -
ISIS has radicalized people around the world. But even with one of the world's largest Muslim populations, India has had very few cases of radicalization — until recently. Most cases are in the south. -
It was a resounding victory not just for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but for his political party. Critics accused the party of using fear tactics amid rising Hindu nationalism. -
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won reelection and his party performed well in parliamentary elections. What does his victory signal about the world's most populous democracy?
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Votes are being counted in India after elections that lasted six weeks. Early results show a landslide for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatijya Janata Party.
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With nearly 900 million eligible voters, the elections are considered the world's largest. Now travelers — both Indian and foreign — want to experience what it's like across the country. -
The northeastern state of Assam left some 4 million people, mostly Muslims, off its citizenship register last year. At the same time, India is seeking to offer citizenship to non-Muslim foreigners. -
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and holds an outsize influence on national policy. Its goal: to redefine India according to the Hindu faith.
