Clair MacDougall

Clair MacDougall (2018) is an independent journalist, based in Monrovia, Liberia and reports throughout Africa. Her work has focused on Liberia’s post-war construction and imperfect attempts to reconcile with its brutal past. Clair reported on the Ebola outbreak and its aftermath, contributing to The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage and earning her the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund Award. She has written about mercenaries, former warlords and child soldiers, justice for war crimes, government corruption, and drug addiction, and has worked on award-winning documentaries for PBS Frontline.

During her Logan Nonfiction Program fellowship, Clair will work on “West Point Calypso,” a book about ex-fighters and marginalized youths who were driven by war and poverty into a vast Liberian community of seaside slums. Focusing on them as a symbol of the inequalities at the heart of Liberia’s difficult history, Clair will weave the stories of West Point residents’ daily struggles with reflections on the international community’s attempts to aid the country in the aftermath of war and the Ebola outbreak.