I’m a journalist currently reporting on the race beat at Gothamist and WNYC, the local NPR station. Email me at asundaram[at]nypublicradio[dot]org to connect.

I’m an Indian-American writer from Raleigh, North Carolina. Currently I’m living in Brooklyn, New York.

Before starting at WNYC, I wrapped up a year-long stint as the inaugural investigations desk fellow at the New York Times. I dug into police traffic stops for a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, unearthed scoops about anti-harassment charity Time’s Up, and investigated the rise workplace productivity monitoring for a forthcoming story.

I’ve reported on immigration for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Texas legislature for Texas Tribune, and criminal justice for The Texas Observer. For the Observer, I wrote about how TX jails skirt inmate death investigations, and during 2021 Winter Storm Uri, I obtained video footage of snow falling into a Texas prison cell. Both of these projects were featured in The Marshall Project’s newsletter.

My immigration reporting has taken me across the U.S.-Mexico border, from a colonia in the Rio Grande Valley to a Hindu temple in Southern California. For The Atlantic, I wrote about the Border Patrol-to-Emergency Room pipeline. For The Guardian, my article on the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing the border won Yale’s MacMillan Foltz Journalism prize.

I’ve also worked as an investigative intern for the Bronx Defenders, and a research assistant for Pamela Colloff and Sarah Stillman.

I graduated from Yale University with a degree in American Studies, where I won the 1st place John Hersey prize for my reporting portfolio and the Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for my senior thesis. Shortly after graduating, I worked as a Yale Parker Huang fellow covering immigration. Email me at arya.m.sun[at]gmail[dot]com or asundaram[at]nypublicradio.org.