She is a coauthor, with Wen Ho Lee, of My Country Versus Me, which reveals what happened to the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for China in the worst case since the Rosenbergs.

Zia is an award-winning journalist and former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, books and anthologies. She was named one of the “Most Influential Asian Americans of the Decade by A. Magazine. She has received numerous journalism awards for her groundbreaking stories; her investigation of date rape at the University of Michigan led to campus demonstrations and an overhaul of its policies, while her research on women who join neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations provoked new thinking on the relationship between race and gender violence in hate crimes.

A second generation Chinese American, Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. In 1997 she testified before the US Commission on Civil Rights on the racial impact of the news media.

Zia traveled to Beijing in 1995 to the UN Fourth World Congress on Women as part of a journalists of color delegation. She has appeared in numerous news programs and films; her work on the Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award nominated film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? and she was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.

Zia received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Law School of the City University of New York for bringing important matters of law and civil rights into public view. She is a graduate of Princeton University's first graduating class of women. She quit medical school after completing two years, then went to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker, and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life's work as a writer.