Ann Louise Bardach is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. She is also the editor of The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro as well as Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion and served on The Brookings Institution's Cuba Study Project.

She is a reporter for The Daily Beast/Newsweek and was a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair for ten years, and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic et al. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, Dateline, CNN, Nightline, The O'Reilly Factor, Charlie Rose, National Public Radio and PRI's Marketplace. She created and wrote the Global Buzz column for Newsweek International and the Interrogation column for Slate.

She won the PEN USA Award for Journalism in 1995 for her reporting in Vanity Fair on Mexican politics, and was a finalist in 1994 for her coverage of women in Islamic countries. Her book Cuba Confidential was a finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism and the PEN USA Award for Best Nonfiction, and named one of Ten Best Books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times.

She was a finalist for the 2005 PEN USA award for Journalism for her ground-breaking story on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ties with the tabloids- published in Los Angeles magazine.

She started the International Journalism class at University of California at Santa Barbara and is on the board of PEN USA and UCSB's Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media and is also a Resident Scholar with the Orfalea Center at UCSB.