Bite off more than you can chew: thirty-two-year-old Samantha Power dared to tackle a global issue and was awarded a Pulitzer prize. She explains to deputy editor Ruth Davis how she rose to such a challenge. (On My Mind).(Interview)

* As a little girl, Samantha Power dreamed of becoming a sportscaster, not a human-rights activist. But then one day when she was 18, she saw footage of Chinese student demonstrators being crushed by tanks in Tiananmen Square, and ever since she's been focused on righting wrongs overseas. Last year, she published A Problem From Hell, which looks at American indifference to mass murder around the world. The book was awarded a Pulitzer prize, which makes 32-year-old Samantha one of the youngest winners ever. Here, she talks about putting her goals into action.

What made you want to write a book about genocide?

When I was 22, I decided I wanted to go to Bosnia and be a journalist. The conflict in the Balkans was going on at the time, and while I was there, the Serbs rounded up 7,000 men and boys and massacred them simply because they were Muslim. When I eventually came back to the United States, the Holocaust Museum had recently opened in Washington, D.C., and there was all this talk about how genocide would never happen again. Meanwhile, I had just seen it happen. I felt so frustrated that I decided I needed to do something about it.

You went to Bosnia without any experience?

Yup, I was a total rookie. It was kind of scary. Before I went, I was interning at a foundation in Washington that was in the same building as U.S. News and World Report. One day, I introduced myself to an editor, said I was heading over to Bosnia, and asked if I could call him with stories. He said yes, and that's exactly what I did. I think if more people knew that they could take such professional risks, they'd do the same thing. The key is finding someone who believes in giving young people a chance and approaching them. You can't expect anything to be handed to you.

You worked on the book while going to law school. How did you get it done?

It was ...