“Rachel Louise Snyder writes with the rigorous scrutiny of an investigative journalist and the deep and roving empathy of a natural-born novelist; the result is a bold and mesmerizing exploration of daily truths we don’t talk about nearly enough”

—Andre Dubus III, author of Gone So Long and House of Sand and Fog

In works of “uncommon talent and confidence” (M. Gessen, The New York Times), author and investigative journalist Rachel Louise Snyder explores the causes and consequences of the violence that impacts women around the globe. Her work demands that we see the reality of gender-based violence, domestic abuse, poverty, race and class prejudice, and other often overlooked social crises.

Snyder’s is the author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, about which critic Parul Sehgal drew comparisons to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in its literary indelibility: “I read Snyder’s book as if possessed, stopping for nothing, feeling the pulse beat in my brain.” A compelling work of investigative journalism with the narrative force of a novel, No Visible Bruises reveals that one of America’s most urgent social problems takes place behind closed doors, and that the most dangerous place for a woman, statistically, is her own home. Whether we call it domestic violence, private violence, or intimate terrorism, it has a far more pervasive impact on our society than many realize. Between 2000 and 2006, about 3,200 Americans were killed in combat. In that time, more than three times as many women were killed by their partners.

“No Visible Bruises is a seminal and breathtaking account of why home is the most dangerous place to be a woman. Through brilliant insights and myth-busting research, compelling storytelling, and a passionate focus on truth-telling, Rachel Louise Snyder places domestic violence exactly where it should be, smack in the center of everything. A tour de force.”

—V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of the Vagina Monologues

A sobering meditation on the far reaching social consequences of intimate violence, No Visible Bruises draws on the stories of survivors, perpetrators, law enforcement officers, and victim advocates to lay bare the policies and cultural narratives that help abusers escape responsibility and upends common myths about domestic violence. Snyder also illuminates the intersections between domestic violence and poverty, homelessness, and addiction, underscoring the fact that none of these patterns emerges in a vacuum, and gives us concrete steps that can save lives.

No Visible Bruises was awarded the New York Public Library’s Bernstein Journalism Award, the 2018 Lukas Work-in-Progress Award from the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, as well as the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, it was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by The New York Times.

Snyder’s follow-up, Women We Buried, Women We Burned, recounts her own troubled family story in a powerful memoir that relates her personal history with honesty, lyricism, and an eternal eye to the social issues that have become her life’s work. When eight-year-old Rachel’s mother died, her distraught father thrust the family into extreme evangelicalism. After a childhood marked by silence and rage, teenage Rachel became outwardly furious-and rebellious. She was expelled from school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually traveling the globe, where survival became her reporter’s beat.

In places like India, Tibet, Niger, and Cambodia, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In country after country, she found people choosing hope over despair. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a deeper appreciation for life’s complexity, a distinctly generous approach to difficult subject matter, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.

As a journalist, Snyder has traveled to more than 60 countries, covering stories of human rights, natural disaster, and war. Her audio credits include the nationally syndicated global affairs series Latitudes on public radio, Marketplace, and All Things Considered, and the Audible original podcast The First Wife: John Meehan’s Reign of Terror. A contributing writer for The New York Times opinion section, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The New Republic. Her other books are Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade and the novel What We’ve Lost is Nothing. She is at work a reported narrative examination of gender discrimination and criminalized survivors in the judicial system. Snyder lived in Chicago, London, Boston and Phnom Penh, Cambodia before relocating to Washington, DC, where she is an distinguished professor in the creative writing program at American University.

For more on Rachel Louise Snyder, please visit her on Facebook, Instagram, and at globalgrit.com.