The authors
Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz wrote Finding Chandra together as colleagues in the investigations unit of The Washington Post. They shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and later wrote a second book together, American Cartel.
Scott Higham
Investigative reporter, The Washington Post
Scott Higham joined The Washington Post in 2000 and became a member of its investigations unit. His Post investigations included abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and waste and fraud in Homeland Security contracting, which won the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for large newspapers.
With Sari Horwitz and Sarah Cohen he shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, for a series on the deaths of children in the District of Columbia’s care. He was a lead reporter on the Post’s “The Opioid Files”, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His opioid investigation with CBS’s 60 Minutes won a Peabody, an Emmy, and duPont-Columbia and Edward R. Murrow awards.
Books
- Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery, with Sari Horwitz. Scribner, 2010.
- American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry, with Sari Horwitz. Twelve, 2022.
Sari Horwitz
Investigative reporter, The Washington Post
Sari Horwitz spent about four decades at The Washington Post. She arrived as a summer intern in 1984, was hired as a reporter and started on the night police beat in 1986. Over the years she covered crime, homeland security, federal law enforcement, education, social services and the Justice Department, and spent many of them on the Post’s investigative staff.
She has shared in four Pulitzer Prizes. Her investigation of D.C. police shootings won the Post the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 2002 she won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting with Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen, for their work on the deaths of children in the District’s foster care system. She was part of the Post teams that won the 2008 prize for Breaking News Reporting, on the Virginia Tech shootings, and the 2018 prize for National Reporting, on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
With Higham she was a lead reporter on the 2008 series on the Chandra Levy case that became Finding Chandra. The two later led “The Opioid Files”, the Post’s investigation of the opioid industry and a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. That work became their second book, American Cartel.
Much of her later work was about criminal justice. In 2015 she wrote about Sharanda Jones, serving life for a first-time drug offense; President Obama commuted Jones’s sentence that December. Her series “Justice in Indian Country”, on how gaps in jurisdiction left crimes against Native American women and children unprosecuted, became a book.
Her last project at the Post was an 18-month investigation of Native American boarding schools with Dana Hedgpeth and colleagues, published in 2024. The team won the 2025 Dori J. Maynard Justice Award for it. Her retirement from the Post was announced in February 2025.
A native of Tucson, Arizona, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College, wrote for Congressional Quarterly, and holds a master’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University.
Books
- Sniper: Inside the Hunt for the Killers Who Terrorized the Nation, with Michael Ruane. Random House, 2003.
- Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery, with Scott Higham. Scribner, 2010.
- Justice in Indian Country. The Washington Post and Diversion Books.
- American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry, with Scott Higham. Twelve, 2022.
Honours
- Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 1999, to The Washington Post, for the investigation of D.C. police shootings she co-wrote
- Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, 1999, for the same investigation
- Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, 2002, with Scott Higham and Sarah Cohen
- Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, 2008, as part of the Post staff, for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings
- Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, 2018, as part of a Post team, for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
- Pulitzer finalist for Public Service, 2020, “The Opioid Files”, as a lead reporter
- Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, for reporting on the disadvantaged
- Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal
- Dori J. Maynard Justice Award, 2025, with the Post team, for “Indian Boarding Schools”
- Edgar Award nominee, Best Fact Crime, 2011, for Finding Chandra, with Scott Higham
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