Farnaz Fassihi

Farnaz Fassihi was born in 1971 and is an award winning Iranian-American journalist. She is a senior staff writer for The Wall Street Journal covering the Middle East.

Farnaz Fassihi was born in the United States to Iranian parents and grew up in Tehran and Portland, Oregon. She received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Fassihi is also the author of Waiting for An Ordinary Day, a memoir of her four years covering the Iraq war. Fassihi won six national journalism awards for her coverage of the Iranian presidential elections in 2009.

Fassihi is currently Deputy Mideast bureau chief, The Wall Street Journal and based in Beirut, Lebanon for the Wall Street Journal covering Iran and the region. She served as the Journal’s Baghdad bureau chief from 2003-2006. In the past decade, she has covered four wars and several uprisings. In 2009 she spent two months in Iran covering the presidential elections and the unrest that followed.

Prior to joining the Wall Street Journal, Fassihi worked as an investigative reporter and roving foreign correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ. She was also a reporter for “The Providence Journal” in Rhode Island covering local news. She also worked as a stringer for The New York Times in Iran and New York City.