Steve Coll bio

Steve Coll is President of New America Foundation, and a contributor to The New Yorker magazine. He spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper’s Managing Editor from 1998 to 2004.

He is the author of six books including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC’s battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994); Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Coll’s professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these for explanatory journalism in 1990 for his series with David A. Vise about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005 for his book Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross award, the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing. He lives in Washington, D.C.

• President, New America Foundation
• Staff Writer, The New Yorker magazine, Sep. 2005-present
• Recipient, Pulitzer Prize, Ghost Wars, 2005
• Recipient, Arthur Ross Award, Council on Foreign Relations, 2005
• Managing Editor, The Washington Post, 1998-2005
• Recipient, Overseas Press Club Award for International Affairs, 2004
• Recipient, Lionel Gelber Prize for Book on International Affairs, 2004
• Recipient, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award, for coverage on Civil War in Sierra Leone, 2000
• Recipient, Overseas Press Club Award for International Magazine Writing, 2000
• Recipient, Livingston Award for Outstanding Foreign Reporting, 1992
• Former Foreign Correspondent and Senior Editor, The Washington Post, 1985-1998
• Recipient, Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism Series on SEC with David A. Vise, 1990

• Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude, English and History, Occidental College, 1980

• The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, 2008
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, 2004
• On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia, 1994
• Eagle on the Street (Co-written with David A. Vise), 1991
• The Taking of Getty Oil, 1987
• The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T, 1986