Asli Pelit

Asli Pelit is a journalist at The Athletic covering the NWSL, the U.S. women's national team and the business of women's soccer. She has reported on the global game since 2013, for TRT Sport, USA Today Sports, VICE, Forbes, and most recently was a staff writer at Sportico. Pelit holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University, an MBA from Columbia Business School and was a 2020-2021 Knight-Bagehot Fellow. Before that she was the Sports Deals Reporter at Sportico. Prior to joining Sportico, Pelit created short and long form visual stories for Voice of America in New York, for USA Today and “VICE” on HBO. From 2006 to 2014, Pelit was based in South America where she created, produced, and anchored “Continent of 10s,” a weekly documentary series focusing on soccer, business, politics and culture for TRT Sport. She has covered three Copa Americas and two World Cups, with a specific focus on how corruption affected host countries and their economies. She is the recipient of the Wynthon Children of Chernobil. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog Vinicius.

THE CHILDREN OF CHERNOBIL(Nonfiction, History, Forthcoming: UNC Press)

In the summer of 1989, Sergio Lopez Briel, a young Cuban diplomat, arrived in Kyiv as a counsel. It was his first overseas mission. He spent his first week in meetings with his Ukrainian counterparts. During one of those meetings, he was introduced to the secretary of the Communist Youth in Ukraine, Anatoli Matvienko. It was in this meeting that Briel found out the impact of Chernobyl had been more serious than the official USSR report claimed, and that thousands of children and young adults were dying from radiation-related diseases. Briel, appalled at Matvienko’s account, called Havana. 48 hours later President Fidel Castro’s office called back to let him know that help was on the way. A team of Cuban medical experts arrived in Kiev within a week to evaluate the situation and plan a rescue mission. That’s how operation Niños de Chernobil started.

From 1990 to 2006, Cuba treated 26,114 Ukrainian and Belarusian and Russian victims of Chernobyl 23,000 of which were children. Children of Chernobil tells the riveting story of these children who were brought to Tarara, a small beach town resort built in 1940s for American tourists that was converted into their new home for years to come. Here their medical treatment, schooling, accommodations, clothing, and nutrition were taken care of by the Cubans, an extraordinary expense during the country's worst economic crisis. Written thanks to interviews conducted with survivors and former patients strewn across the globe, the doctors and nurses that saved their lives and the diplomats that made the project happen, The Children of Chernobil is as necessary a book today as it is heartrending and sheds light on a page of history that has long stayed buried.

Aslı has assembled an ideal cast of characters—patients, doctors, a key diplomat – and been interviewing them at length. She has found the perfect pitch in writing with deserved respect for the Cuban doctors while also understanding that “medical diplomacy” was part of Fidel Castro’s exercise of soft power. Her book explores the history of Chernobyl, which is sadly relevant to our times under present circumstances. Her sample chapter, about one particular child’s mysterious illness and his parents’ desperate search for medical care, is already a gripping mixture of tick-tock storytelling and relevant context. More than anything though this is a deeply human, touching and gripping story of love, family, community and endurance in the face of one of the most grotesque catastrophes in history.

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