Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews (born 1971) is a British writer, historian and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Books Award,^[1] the Orwell Prize for political writing,^[2] and France's Prix Medicis Etranger^[3] His books have been translated into 28 languages. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine. Matthews has lectured on Russian history and politics at Columbia University's Harriman Centre,^[4] St Antony's College Oxford,^[5] and the Journalism Faculty of Moscow State University.

Biography

Owen Matthews was born in London in 1971. He was educated at Westminster School and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford.^[6]

Journalism

During the Bosnian War, Matthews worked as foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade.^[6][7] From 1995-7 he worked as a reporter on The Moscow Times. In 1997 he joined Newsweek Magazine's Moscow Bureau as a correspondent, covering the Second Chechen war. In 2001 he moved to Turkey, reporting from Turkey, the Caucasus, Syria and Iran, and also covering the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq.^[6][8] From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief; he is now a Contributing Editor at the magazine.^[6]

Books

• Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War (Bloomsbury, 2008), a memoir of three generations of Matthews' family in Russia, was named as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph.^[9][10]
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America (Bloomsbury 2013), a history of Imperial Russia's doomed attempt to colonize America, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pushkin House Prize^[11] for books on Russia.^{[12][13][14][15]}
• Moscou Babylone (Les Escales, 2013), a novel based on Matthews' experiences in Moscow in the 1990s, has been published in French,^[16] German^[17] and Czech. It was chosen as the 'coup de coeur etranger' (favorite foreign book) at the 2013 Nancy Literary Festival, Le Livre sur la Place.^[18]
• Thinking with the Blood (Newsweek, 2014), a personal reportage based on a journey across war-torn Ukraine in the late summer of 2014, was published as an ebook.

References

External links

• Newsweek Magazine author page
• Spectator Magazine author page
• Pushkin House Prize author interview
• Guardian First Books Award author interview
• Nancy Literary Festival author interview
• Huffington Post author interview
• Forbes Magazine article on Matthews' Russia coverage