Arya Sundaram

About

I’m an Indian-American writer from Raleigh, North Carolina. Currently, I’m working as reporter at WNYC and Gothamist, covering the influx of newly arrived asylum-seekers in New York City.As the inaugural investigations fellow at the New York Times, I contributed to a Pulitzer Prize Award-winning police traffic stops investigation, along with quick-turn enterprise stories about former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and prominent anti-harassment charity Time's Up. I’ve reported on immigration for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Texas legislature for Texas Tribune, and criminal justice for The Texas Observer. For the Observer, I wrote about how Texas jails skirt inmate death investigations, and during 2021 Winter Storm Uri, I obtained video footage of snow falling into a Texas prison cell. Both of these projects were featured in The Marshall Project’s newsletter. My immigration reporting has taken me across the U.S.-Mexico border, from a colonia in the Rio Grande Valley to a Hindu temple in Southern California. For The Atlantic, I wrote about the Border Patrol-to-Emergency Room pipeline. For The Guardian, my article on the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing the border won Yale’s MacMillan Foltz Journalism prize.I graduated from Yale University with a degree in American Studies, where I won the 1st place John Hersey prize for my reporting portfolio and the Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for my senior thesis on New York City's child welfare system during the pandemic. Cell/Signal/WhatsApp: 512-650-8767WNYC Email: asundaram[at]nypublicradio[dot]comProtonmail: arya.sundaram[at]protonmail[dot]com