Iona Craig is a British-Irish freelance journalist. Since 2010 her reporting has focused on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.
Career
Craig was raised in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom, and attended City University in London. Previous to her study and work as a journalist, Craig was a horse trainer and jockey. As a BBC intern, Craig studied Arabic, and moved to Sana’a, Yemen in 2010 to become the managing editor of the Yemen Times. As the Yemeni revolution began in February 2011 she left the Yemen Times to concentrate on freelance reporting including as Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, for which she was the recipient of the 2014 Martha Gellhorn prize. On 27 February 2013, Craig survived an assassination attempt when the taxi she was travelling in was ambushed and came under fire outside the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Sana'a. The taxi driver also survived. His quick thinking likely saved Craig's life. The last accredited Western journalist in the country, she left in 2014. Since then she has repeatedly returned to the country to report on the Yemen civil war, human rights abuses and the country's humanitarian crisis from both sides of the frontlines. In 2017, she reported on the tragically botched Yakla raid. Her work has appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, USA Today, Al Jazeera America, Time , Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, Index on Censorship, The Intercept, and Vice, amongst others. Craig is also the volunteer spokesperson for the Yemen Data Project.
Awards and accolades
2014 - winner. Judges wrote of her work: “Often alone, and risking her life, Iona has for almost four years given voice to the ordinary people of Yemen, especially the families of the victims of America’s ‘war on terror’." Frontline Club Award 2014 - print winner. Craig won the award for her investigation into a US drone attack that left 12 civilians dead. To write the piece, she courageously travelled undercover to the strike site six days after the bombing of a wedding convoy in remote central Yemen. The Orwell Prize for journalism 2016 - winner. Kurt Schork Memorial Awards 2016 - international journalism winner. Craig was commended for the undercover stories from Yemen. International Media Awards 2017 - winner. Craig won the Cutting Edge Award for her work on the Yemeni Crisis. The award is given to journalists who have recently risen to prominence due to the outstanding quality of their work, and 2018 George Polk Award.
