Kira Salak (born September 4, 1971) is an American writer, adventurer, and journalist known for her travels in Mali and Papua New Guinea.
When Salak was 13, her parents sent her to Wayland Academy, a boarding school in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where she participated in cross-country activities and set a state level track record when she was 14.
At the age of 24, Salak took a year off from graduate school to backpack around Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Island nation, and became the first American woman to cross the country.
Salak gained a reputation for being a tough adventurer, surviving war zones, coup attempts, and life-threatening bouts with malaria and cholera (the New York Times described her as a "tough, real life Lara Croft"[4] and Book Magazine described her as "the gutsiest – and some say, craziest – woman adventurer of our day.
Salak stayed in the Congolese town of Bunia, which was taken over by child soldiers, an experience she described as "an endless stream of the worst, most inconceivable acts of inhumanity".