Mariya Ilyas ’13 spent last summer launching a high school newspaper in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Ilyas lived there as a child, before it became known as the location where Osama bin Laden was killed. Ilyas shared her experiences in her blog Multiple Lenses and in an essay she wrote for the Bowdoin Daily Sun.

The Times Record interviewed Ilyas for its year-end series, Newsmakers 2011, in which she speaks candidly about the unexpected challenges she encountered on the trip back to her hometown. Read the article.