Gary Lee (journalist)
Gary Lee is an award-winning American journalist with a focus on foreign policy, travel writing and environmental issues. He wrote for the Washington Post as well as Time Magazine. He speaks five languages including Russian German, French and Spanish, and he was the Washington Post's Moscow Bureau Chief. He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for foreign coverage and won the Lowell Thomas Award for travel journalism for his coverage of 9/11. He was elected to the position of charter trustee at Phillips Academy in 2009. In 2007, he left the Washington Post to become a freelance journalist.
Education
Lee grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the fourth child in a family of eleven. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts between 1970 and '74. His studies there centered on English literature and modern languages. He began his reporting career at Andover as a writer for The Phillipian, the campus newspaper, and general manager of WPAA, the school's radio station. Lee, in a later interview with travel writer Ross Potts, thought that his parents realized that he had a wanderlust and urge to explore the world. Lee graduated from Andover in 1974, the school's first co-educational class; among his classmates were many future writers, including poets Chris Agee and Karl Kirchwey, writer Nate Lee, publisher and activist Ted Nace, editor Sara Nelson, and political analyst and writer Heather Mac Donald. Lee completed his secondary school education in studies at Uppingham School, a private academy in Rutland County, England. Lee attended Amherst College and graduated cum laude in 1979, with a double major in Russian language and Development Studies with particular interest in Africa. He was editor in chief of the Amherst Student, the campus newspaper, an avid track runner, and dj of a jazz radio program.
