Jen Stout

Jen Stout is a Scottish freelance journalist whose reporting has provided sharp insights into global politics and the human cost of conflict. Her most recent work has focused on the war in Ukraine, and she has contributed to publications including BBC Radio, the London Review of Books, Prospect and the Sunday Post. With a background in investigative journalism and long-form reporting, she is a frequent speaker and debate moderator on topics including war reporting, politics and media ethics.

Jen Stout began her career in local journalism, working for CommonSpace and the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, before moving to the BBC, where she worked in television and radio.

A graduate of the Alfa Fellowship in Moscow (which was cut short by Russia's invasion of Ukraine), Stout has also won awards, including the Rory Peck Trust Bursary (2022) and the Society of Authors' Travelling Scholarship (2023). Her reporting on Ukraine has been shortlisted for prestigious awards, including the Amnesty International Media and Scottish Press Awards.

Jen Stout's first book, Night Train to Odesa (2024), is an intimate and gripping account of the war in Ukraine based on her first-hand experience of reporting from the front line. The book begins with Stout's abrupt departure from Moscow at the start of the war, taking her to Romania and across Ukraine. Through night trains, military hospitals, bombed-out cities and fleeting birthday celebrations in bunkers, she documents the resilience and humanity of Ukrainians under siege.

The book is both vivid reportage and a deeply personal narrative. A solo freelance journalist with limited institutional support, Stout writes with extraordinary empathy and honesty, offering readers a window into the lives of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Critics have hailed her work as a "luminous love letter to an embattled nation" (The Observer), with others comparing it to the classic war reporting of Martha Gellhorn.

Photo credit: Andrew Cawley