Sebastian Rotella is an award-winning foreign correspondent, investigative journalist and author. Since 2010, he has been a senior reporter at ProPublica covering international security issues. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Frontline PBS and other outlets. He has reported in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, and he speaks Spanish, French and Italian.
Between 1987 and 2010, he worked at the Los Angeles Times, serving as bureau chief in Buenos Aires/Rio de Janeiro and Paris, investigative correspondent in Madrid, and correspondent at the Mexican border. His honors include a Peabody Award for the report Finding Oscar: Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala; Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Award for career Latin American coverage; the German Marshall Fund’s Weitz Prize for European reporting; awards from the Overseas Press Club and Inter-American Press Association; a National Press Club award, and Italy’s Urbino Press Award.
Sebastian is the author of the novels Rip Crew, named to the Kirkus list of best crime fiction of 2018; The Convert’s Song (2014), and Triple Crossing, which the New York Times Sunday Book Review named its favorite debut crime novel and action thriller of 2011. He is also the author of Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border (1998), a New York Times notable book. He is a frequent guest on Spanish-language broadcast networks including Univision, Telemundo, NTN24 and RTVE. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, studied at the University of Barcelona, and was born in Chicago.