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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In London, an actor playing Evita sings "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" on a balcony over the street. It's livestreamed into the theater — frustrating some ticket holders but delighting passersby. -
In London, an actor playing Evita sings "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from a balcony over the street. It's livestreamed back into the theater – frustrating ticket holders but delighting the public.
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The new law makes it illegal to investigate, arrest, prosecute or imprison any woman in England or Wales for terminating her own pregnancy — no matter what term or trimester she's in. -
Spies imitating art: Years after Judi Dench played James Bond's boss, Britain's MI6 spy agency is getting its first female chief.
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It's a case of real life catching up with James Bond fiction: Britain's MI6 spy agency named its first-ever female chief. She used to be Q. Now she'll be C. -
Gibraltar has been the focus of territorial disputes for centuries. But the European Union, Spain and Britain have announced a deal to resolve border issues after Brexit.
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The idea of a Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appears to have jumped the Atlantic. British politician Nigel Farage, a friend of President Trump's, is now launching something similar.
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In a Damascus firehouse, former regime firefighters work side by side with the White Helmets. They were on opposite sides of Syria's war, and struggle with prejudices & fears -- as they work together to build a new country.
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On Friday, Brand pleaded not guilty to five counts of rape and assault that date back more than 25 years. He says the charges are politically motivated. His trial is set for 2026. -
Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international correspondents share moments from their lives and work around the world.
