Bio:  Mona Reeder

Mona Reeder joined The Dallas Morning News as a senior staff photographer in 1999.  She has covered the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the landmark presidential elections in Mexico, and traveled to southeastern Turkey to document the Kurdish situation for “Hidden Wars,” a team project.

In early 2002,  Reeder was sent to Afghanistan to chronicle the war on terrorism and its effects on people trying to free themselves from the oppressive Taliban regime.  She received numerous awards for her body of work there, including World Press Photo and Pictures of the Year International.

Her work was awarded the Visa D’Or International Daily Press Award 2008 in Perpignan, France.  Reeder was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography, and  won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for her most recent project “The Bottom Line.”  The project, which depicted the economic disparities in Texas created by public policy, also won numerous awards in POYi, Best of Photojournalism, The Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Photography,  the Harry Chapin Media Award, Online Journalism Award, and the Community Service Photojournalism Award from ASNE.

Her photographs have been recognized in state, national and international competitions, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award of Excellence for her documentary work on the diabetes epidemic of Native Americans in Southern Arizona in 2000.  She was a POYi finalist for Photographer of the Year in 2003, a finalist in 2003 for the Alexia Foundation grant, and was named Arizona Press Photographer of the Year in 1998.

She graduated from California State University, Sacramento and recently taught photojournalism at the University of North Texas.  Reeder previously worked at newspapers in California, Ohio, and Arizona.