Today I have the immense pleasure of speaking with author Anna Badkhen about her new collection of essays, To See Beyond. Badkhen talks about how her experiences as a veteran war correspondent exposed her to War’s multiple forms of violence, destruction, and carnage, and how that compelled her to write these essays about survival, and hope. Speaking from many global locations and from a wide range of historical and cultural perspectives, from antiquity to the present, Badkhen’s essays draw together amazingly imaginative connections across peoples, and ways of seeing. Ultimately, we are shown how to both recognize violence, and hope as well. Anna favors us by reading select passages from this marvelous, and necessary, book.
Anna Badkhen’s new essay collection, To See Beyond, is out from Bellevue Literary Press in April 2026. She is the author of seven other published books, most recently Bright Unbearable Reality, which was a finalist for the 2026 Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize and was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and for the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature.
Badkhen’s awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones.
A former war correspondent, Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union and is a US citizen. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
