Conor O'Clery

Conor O'Clery is an Irish journalist and writer.

Background

Born in Belfast, Conor O'Clery graduated from Queen's University Belfast in 1972. He was deputy editor of The Gown, the QUB student newspaper.

Career

O'Clery worked for The Irish Times for over 30 years in various positions, including news editor and foreign correspondent based in London, Moscow, Washington, D.C., Beijing and New York City.

He wrote for The New Republic from Moscow, contributed columns to Newsweek International, and has been a frequent commentator on broadcast channels BBC, NPR and CNN.

O'Clery won several awards, including Journalist of the Year, twice, in Ireland: first, in 1987, for his reporting of the Soviet Union, and secondly, in 2002, for reporting the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, which he witnessed from his office three blocks away.

O'Clery has written a number of books.

He lives in Dublin with his Russian-born Armenian wife, Zhanna. His book, The Shoemaker and his Daughter, tells the story of Zhanna's family, an ordinary Soviet family, from World War 1 to the fall of the Soviet Union and won the 2020 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction.