'Sophie Cousins is an award-winning Australian writer and author. She was based between Nepal and India between 2015 and 2020 where she wrote about the systems that exacerbate gender inequality and the impact this has on women's and girls' health. Prior to that she was based in the Middle East.
'She now lives off-the-grid in Central America and writes fiction and conceptual essays. She wrote about leaving journalism – an industry that perpetuates harmful and blinkered narratives – here.
'Sophie is the author of Renewal: Five Paths to a Fairer Australia, a book that examines how Australia can build back a better, more just society in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. It was published by Text Publishing in February 2021 and was described by the Sydney Morning Herald as “A stand-and-deliver extended essay for our times”. She spent several months in Australia reporting on COVID-19 thanks to a grant from the National Geographic Society. She wrote the book as a writer-in-residence at NES artist residency in Iceland.
'Her short and long-form work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, National Geographic, LitHub, London Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Mosaic Science, Lancet, New Scientist, Nature, NPR, SBS and Caravan, among other publications. She is also the author of A Woman’s Worth: Health, Stigma and Discrimination in India (2019), a book that follows Indian women through their life-cycle to examine how gender inequality and stigma affect their health.'
