Simona Foltyn

Simona Foltyn is an award-winning investigative journalist and filmmaker based in the Middle East, with more than a decade of experience in the region and working proficiency in Arabic. She is a Special Correspondent for the PBS News Hour and is known for in-depth, nuanced coverage of conflict. In addition to news reporting, she has produced documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, and Al Jazeera English, focusing on underreported stories and investigations that expose the abuse of power. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Politico Magazine. Foltyn’s reporting has been recognized with a duPont-Columbia Award, a Kurt Schork Award, and a Peabody nomination. She has been based in Lebanon since 2024 and previously lived in Baghdad for almost six years.

Foltyn’s debut book (under contract with Bloomsbury) is a work of political history investigating the unsolved assassination of a prominent Iraqi activist in the holy Shia city of Karbala. Drawing on six years of reporting, this work of narrative nonfiction unveils Iraq’s complex web of political, religious, and military actors in the turbulent period following ISIS’ defeat in 2017. Part profile of a country in crisis, part murder mystery, the book delves into the dramatic stories of three people, documenting their fight for survival and justice. It takes readers on a captivating search for the truth, into the heart of an uprising, inside torture chambers, courtrooms and secret operation rooms, shedding unique light on the kind of country Iraq has become 25 years after the U.S. invasion.

This bio reflects the fellow’s work and affiliations as of their fellowship year.

• Militia Hit by U.S. Strikes claims no connection to attacks on American troops: An exclusive PBS News Hour report traveling to areas on the Iraq-Syria border to assess the impact of U.S. airstrikes on Iraqi paramilitaries.
• The Forbidden Zone: A BBC investigative documentary on Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq.
•  Iraq, Twenty Years Later: A long read in the Boston Review breaking down the 2022 deadly clashes inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and what it says about the Iraqi state.