Dexter Filkins

Dexter Filkins
Born	Dexter Price Filkins (1961-05-24) May 24, 1961 Cincinnati, Ohio
Nationality	American
Alma mater	St Anthony's College, Oxford University (MPhil) Univ. of Florida (BA 1983)
Occupation	journalist, author
Notable work	The Forever War
Awards	Pulitzer Prize 2009 New York Times – International Reporting

Dexter Filkins (born May 24, 1961) is an American journalist known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the New York Times. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his dispatches from Afghanistan, and he won a Pulitzer in 2009 as part of a team of Times reporters for their dispatches from Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been referred to as "the premier combat journalist of his generation". He currently writes for The New Yorker.

Background

Filkins received a B.A. in political science from the University of Florida in 1983, and an Master of Philosophy in international relations from Oxford University (1984), where he was a student of St Antony's College.

Career

Before joining the Times in September 2000, Filkins was New Delhi bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times for three years. He reported from the New York Times' Baghdad bureau in Iraq from 2003 to 2006.

In 2006–2007, Filkins was at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship; in 2007–2008, he was a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Filkins' book, The Forever War (2008), chronicling his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a New York Times best-seller. The Forever War won the National Book Critics Circle Award for best nonfiction book of 2008, and was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by, among others, the New York Times, Amazon.com, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and the Boston Globe.

Filkins joined The New Yorker in 2011.

Awards

Filkins has received two George Polk Awards, given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. He was cited for his reports from the assault on Fallujah, Iraq, in November 2004, when the Marine company he travelled with lost a quarter of its men in eight days. In 2011, Filkins and New York Times colleague Mark Mazzetti won for their reporting on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Filkins has won two National Magazine Awards; in 2009, for his story, "Right At the Edge," and in 2011 for "Bedrooms of the Fallen," an essay with the photographer Ashley Gilbertson. Both pieces appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

Filkins' article, "Right at the Edge" from September 7, 2008, was part of the body of work by the staff of the New York Times awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished reporting on international affairs.

In 2010, his reporting in the New York Times from Afghanistan and Iraq, along with that of the photographer Tyler Hicks and the reporter C. J. Chivers, was selected by New York University as one of the "Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade".

Bibliography

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External links

• Dexter Filkins collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• "Right at the Edge'" at Pulitzer.org
• "My Long War"' August 22, 2008 by Dexter Filkins for the New York Times Magazine
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • C-SPAN Q&A, April 24, 2005
• Dexter Filkins at the Internet Movie Database
• "Q&A" about "The Forever War"
• Authors@Google One-hour video talk with Dexter Filkins (September 24, 2008)
• Works by or about Dexter Filkins in libraries (WorldCat catalog)