Sarah Kendzior is a writer, researcher, and scholar based out of St. Louis, Missouri. She was the author of the The New York Times best selling book, The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America. She has written for media outlets including Politico, The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Correspondent, and Quartz among many others. Kendzior is also well known for her academic research on authoritarian states in Central Asia.

Sarah Kendzior grew up in Meriden, Connecticut. As a child, she dreamed of working for a local newspaper. When she was 10, she won a contest to write TV criticism for the kid version of Consumer Reports. Kendzior later chose to study at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York because their curriculum included a lot of writing and they offered generous student financial aid. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. To pay for her studies, Kendzior worked as cashier and a water bottle inventory counter during the summers. She also freelanced to get experience as a writer.

Kendzior later graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 2006 with a Master of Arts in Central Eurasian Studies. At Indiana University, she wrote a master's thesis titled "State Propaganda on Islam in Independent Uzbekistan". During her masters, Kendzioir learned to speak Russian and Uzbek. [9][2]In 2012, Kendzior graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology. For her PhD, Kendzior wrote a dissertation titled “The Uzbek Opposition in Exile: Diaspora and Dissident Politics in the Digital Age”.

Sarah Kendzior is a writer, researcher, and scholar best known her New York Times best selling bookThe View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America. She is also well known for her best-selling essay collection The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior, her reporting on political and economic problems in the US, her coverage of the 2016 election and the Trump administration, and her academic research on authoritarian states in Central Asia. She is also the co-host of Gaslit Nation, a biweekly podcast dedicated to covering the rise of autocracy in the US and corruption in the Trump administration.

Since 2017, Kendzior has become a prominent critic of the Trump administration, and has covered topics including authoritarian tactics, kleptocracy, racism and xenophobia, media, voting rights, technology, the environment, and the Russian interference case, among other topics. Kendzior is an op-ed columnist for the The Globe and Mail, where she primarily focuses on US Politics. She is also a frequent contributor to Fast Company, NBC News, and other national outlets. From 2012-2014 she was an op-ed columnist for Al Jazeera English.

Kendzior has also written for Politico, Quartz, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Marie Claire, The Correspondent, The Atlantic, Medium, Radio Free Europe, POLITICO Europe, Chicago Tribune, The Baffler, Blue Nation Review, Alive Magazine, Ethnography Matters, The Common Reader, New York Daily News, La Stampa, Slate, World Policy Journal, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Belt Magazine, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Teen Vogue, City A.M., Opinio Juris, HRDCVR, World Politics Review and The New York Times.

In August 2013, Foreign Policy named Kendzior as one of “the 100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events”.

In October 2013, St. Louis Magazine profiled her as one of 15 inspirational people under 35 in St. Louis. In September 2014, The Riverfront Times named Kendzior the best online journalist in St. Louis. In June 2017, St Louis Magazine named Kendzior the best journalist in St. Louis.

In addition to working as a journalist, Kendzior is also a researcher and scholar.

Kendzior holds a MA in Central Eurasian Studies and a PhD in Anthropology.

Her research mainly focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self-expression, and trust.

Kendzior's academic research has been published in American Ethnological, Problems of Post-Communism, Central Asian Survey, Demokratizatsiya, Nationalities Papers, Social Analysis, and the Journal of Communication. She has also worked as a program associate for the Central Asia Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Kendzior regularly offers her political analysis to the media and has been a guest on NBC, MSNBC, NPR, CBS, Al Jazeera, CBC News, BBC World Service and other broadcast outlets. She is also a recurring guest on the MSNBC show “AM Joy”.

Kendzior has given talks around the world as an invited speaker at universities and at conferences on foreign policy, politics, education and technology.

On Thursday, November 22, 2018, all of Sarah Kendzior's articles for The Correspondent were broken or removed from the site. She believes the issue may issue may be related to a change in editorial control after The Correspondent partnered with Momkai. In a tweet, she explained "They had a change in editorial control last year, stopped paying me money they owe, fired my editor, and the new editor subjected me to misogynist abuse." On November 23, 2018, De Correspondent issued a statement denying all of Sarah Kendzior's allegations. The statement also claimed that the links to Kendzior's articles had just stopped working and were never deleted.

Kendzior responded the same day.

She tweeted that someone who worked on The Correspondent's system had emailed her saying that the articles had been deleted rather than the links simply breaking as The Correspondent had claimed.