Nina Bernstein, a reporter for the New York Times since 1995, has written on a wide range of social welfare and legal issues for the Times, both as a national correspondent and as a metropolitan reporter, most recently covering poverty policy and child welfare in New York City. Her book The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care won the 2002 PEN Literary award for first nonfiction and the 2002 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, as well as being chosen as one of five finalists for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first book of fiction, Magic by the Book, a fantasy novel for children, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in March 2005.

Before joining the New York Times, Bernstein was a reporter for New York Newsday and other periodicals. She served as a foreign correspondent for Newsday in 1990-91, covering German reunification from Berlin, and reported from Bosnia during the summer of 1992.