Charlie LeDuff

Charlie LeDuff is a writer, filmmaker and a multimedia reporter for The Detroit News. He is a former national correspondent for The New York Times.

He covered the war in Iraq, crossed the desert with a group of migrant Mexicans and worked inside a North Carolina slaughterhouse as part of The Times series “How Race Is Lived in America,” which was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

In 2005 LeDuff was host and writer of “Only In America” – a 10-part television show of participatory journalism for the Discovery Times Channel. Among other things he brawled at a fight party held by an Oakland motorcycle gang, rode a bull at a gay rodeo, became a trapeze clown in a traveling circus of immigrants.

LeDuff also hosted and co-produced “United Gates of America” for the BBC in 2006 where he moved into a gated city at the edge of the Los Angeles sprawl. There, he encounters Nazi youth, a porno director, a Christian housewife, the town good-time girl, the angry Mexican gardener and other all-stars of American life.

He is the author of two books:

“Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts” (Penguin Press)

“US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man” (Penguin Press)

Previously, LeDuff, 42, has worked as a carpenter, middle school teacher and gang counselor in Detroit, a bartender in Australia and a baker in Denmark. He lived in a tree house in Alaska and slept on the Great Wall of China. He speaks decent Spanish and bad Russian.

LeDuff received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master of journalism degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

He lives with his wife and daughter near Detroit, Michigan.