Dexter Filkins

Dexter Filkins
Filkins on the USS Rafael Peralta in 2023
Born	Dexter Price Filkins (1961-05-24) May 24, 1961 Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Alma mater	St Antony's College, Oxford (MPhil) Univ. of Florida (BA 1983)
Occupation(s)	journalist, author
Notable work	The Forever War
Awards	Pulitzer Prize 2009 The New York Times – International Reporting

Dexter Price 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 won a Pulitzer in 2009 as part of a team of Times reporters for their dispatches from Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been called "the premier combat journalist of his generation". He currently writes for The New Yorker.

Background

Filkins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but grew up in Florida after his parents divorced. He has a sister and an older brother.

Filkins received a B.A. in political science from the University of Florida in 1983, and a 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's 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, 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 The 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 appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

Filkins' article "Right at the Edge" (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 for The New York Times from Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside the work of photographer Tyler Hicks and reporter C. J. Chivers, was selected by New York University as one of the "Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade".

Bibliography

Books

• Filkins, Dexter (2008). The forever war. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Essays and reporting

• Filkins, Dexter (October 23, 2005). "The fall of the warrior king". Magazine. The New York Times.
• — (November 9, 2006). "Where Plan A left Ahmad Chalabi". Magazine. The New York Times.
• — (October 7, 2007). "Regrets Only?". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 2024-08-17.
• — (March 21, 2010). "The Shrine Down The Hall". The New York Times Magazine. pp. 34–47.
• — (September 12, 2011). "The journalist and the spies". The New Yorker.
• — (July 9, 2012). "After America: Will civil war hit Afghanistan when the U.S. leaves?". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 88 (20): 54–67. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
• — (October 29, 2012). "Atonement". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 88 (34): 92. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
• — (February 25, 2013). "After Syria : if the Assad regime falls, can Hezbollah survive?". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 89 (2): 48–57. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
• — (May 13, 2013). "The thin red line : inside the White House debate over Syria". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 89 (13): 40–49.
• — (September 30, 2013). "The shadow commander : Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he's directing Assad's war in Syria". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 89 (30): 42–53. Retrieved 2015-03-02.
• — (September 29, 2014). "The Fight Of Their Lives". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 90 (29): 42. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
• — (July 20, 2015). "Death of a prosecutor". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 91 (20): 38–51.
• — (March 7, 2016). "A truce in Syria". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 92 (4): 17–18.
• — (January 2, 2017). "Before the flood : a failing dam threatens millions of Iraqis". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 92 (43): 22–28. Mosul Dam.
• — (October 15, 2018). "Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers". A Reporter at Large. The New Yorker. 94 (32): 38–46. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
• — (September 7, 2020). "The uncounted". Letter from Florida. The New Yorker. 96 (26): 34–45.
• — (September 13, 2021). "War with a human face : have rules to curb the cuelty of military force backfired?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 97 (28): 68–72.

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Notes

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 on Charlie Rose
• Dexter Filkins at IMDb
• "Q&A" about "The Forever War"
• Authors@Google One-hour video talk with Dexter Filkins (September 24, 2008)