'How I Did It': Nadja Drost Reveals How She Reported and Wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Story on Migrants Crossing the Darien Gap

Nadja Drost and editor Kit Rachlis will kick off the Overseas Press Club’s new series, “How I Did It,” which pairs freelance journalists with their editors or producers. 

Moderating the discussion on February 3, 2022, will be Marina Walker Guevara, an OPC governor and executive editor at the Pulitzer Center.

Drost is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who works in print, radio, television, and documentary film. Her reporting on the extraordinary journey of migrants from around the world who traverse the dangerous Darien Gap to reach the U.S. won several awards.

The Darien Gap is a road-less, mountainous jungle straddling the Colombia-Panama border.

A long-form piece she wrote for California Sunday Magazine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, as well as first place for Magazine Feature Writing in the National Headliner Awards, the One World Media Refugee Reporting Award, and honorable mention from the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism competition.

A television series about the Darien Gap, Desperate Journey, in which Drost reported with videographer Bruno Federico for the PBS NewsHour, was recognized with an Emmy and Peabody Award, and received the Best in Show for television from the National Headliners Awards in 2021.

Rachlis is a senior editor at ProPublica. He spent seven years as a senior editor at California Sunday Magazine, where he oversaw Drost’s Darien Gap story, “When Can We Really Rest?”

Previously, Rachlis was senior editor at The Atlantic. He also served as editor-in-chief of LA Weekly, Los Angeles magazine, and The American Prospect, and as a senior projects editor at the Los Angeles Times. Stories he edited have won a Livingston Award, a George Polk Award, a John Bartlow Martin Award, a James Beard Award, a PEN American Center Literary Award, and a Front Page Award.