Melanie Kirkpatrick

Melanie Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. She is a writer-journalist based in Connecticut and New York City. She contributes reviews and commentary to various publications, including the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, for which she worked from 1980 to 2009. She is the author of Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad, which World Magazine named the best book of 2012, and Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience.

At the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Kirkpatrick was deputy editor of the editorial page from 2006 to 2009 and a longtime member of the editorial board. As deputy editor, she was responsible for the editorial page's coverage of international issues and oversaw the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal in Asia and Europe, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the US columnists on foreign affairs. She wrote editorials and op-ed articles on foreign affairs.

From 2001 to 2006, she was the editorial page's associate editor, responsible for the Daily Review & Outlook (editorials) column. Before that, she was op-ed editor of the paper. During her career at the Journal, she also oversaw the launch of OpinionJournal.com and other online products, managed the editing and production of books published by the Journal, and served as a member of the board of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.

Ms. Kirkpatrick was a co-editor of the Journal's series, "Whitewater," a six-volume collection of Journal commentary during the Bill Clinton administration. She was also co-editor of several editions of the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by the Journal and the Heritage Foundation; the Index evaluates and ranks the world's economies. And she is the author of Princeton-in-Asia: A Century of Service (1998), a privately published history of the nonprofit educational organization.

Ms. Kirkpatrick spent 10 years in Asia, working for the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and, prior to that, for a division of Time-Life Books in Tokyo. She received the 2001 Mary Morgan Hewett Award for Women in Journalism from the Friends of the East-West Center in Honolulu. The annual award recognizes a journalist who has demonstrated commitment, hard work, and expanding influence throughout her career.

She received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master's degree in English from the University of Toronto. She was a Gannett Newspaper Foundation Fellow in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a trustee emerita of Princeton in Asia, an internship program in Asia for young graduates of American universities; and a director of the America for Bulgaria Foundation. She is a member of the Human Freedom Advisory Council of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

Ms. Kirkpatrick is married to Hudson Senior Fellow and Trustee Jack David.

Reviews and Coverage:

• "Flight from North Korea" by W. Barksdale Maynard, Princeton Alumni Weekly, September 19, 2012 
• "Highway from Hell" by Joseph Loconte, Weekly Standard, September 17, 2012 
• "North Korea's Freedom Trail" by Sue Mi Terry, Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2012 
• "Human Trafficking--The Progeny of the One Child Policy" by Marcus Roberts, Mercator Net, September 12, 2012 
• "A Jerusalem Lost," by Robert Joustra, Christianity Today, September 7, 2012
• "If Even Defectors Aren't Welcomed, Can the Two Koreas Ever Unify?" by Hee-Joung Kim, Forbes, August 27, 2012
• "Tibetan immolation carries incendiary message" by Francesco Sisci, Asia Times, June 27, 2012