David Aquila Lawrence, or "Quil" as he's been known since birth, grew up in East Benton, Maine. After a few years supporting a passion for travel and writing, he found his way to journalism in 1996, writing his first pieces from Morocco for The Toronto Globe and Mail and Christian Science Monitor Radio.

Quil moved to Bogota, Colombia in 1996, stringing for the Los Angeles Times, NPR and the BBC. For three years he reported on the Andean region, using Colombia as a base. In Spring of 2000 a Pew Fellowship took Quil to Iraq, Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and Syria. He free-lanced from Cuba, Sudan and Morocco before joining The World as Latin America correspondent in winter of 2000.

Quil covered Afghanistan in the final days of the Taliban, and has traveled there periodically to report on security, politics, culture and the drug trade. In 2003 he returned to Iraq three months before the US invasion. He crossed the mountains from Iran in a January blizzard, and stayed in the Kurdish controlled region until the fall of the government in Baghdad. Quil has reported extensively from Iraq for The World, traveling to every major city, and reporting from all the neighboring countries. He covered the assault on Fallujah, and all of Iraq's elections. Quil is the author of Invisible Nation: How the Kurds Quest for Statehood is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East.

Quil has won awards for his coverage of Colombia, Sudan and Iraq. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Arabic.