Rita Leistner

Born in Toronto, Canada, Rita Leistner is a graduate of the International Center for Photography in New York, and has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Toronto. She spent 10 months covering the war in Iraq between April 2003 and September 2004. With a focus on in-depth, long-term projects, her feature work includes a profile of an American Cavalry Unit during a three month embed in the spring and summer of 2003, a portrait story of women residents at the Al Rashad Psychiatric Hospital in Baghdad, and a feature on the gravediggers at the cemetery of Najaf during the August-September siege of 2004. She often writes as well as photographs her stories. Her photographs and stories from Iraq have been published in The Walrus, Newsweek, Time, Colors, Rolling Stone and Maclean's, among other publications.