“Citizenship
is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed
opinion and stand by it.” – Martha Gellhorn
Quoting Gellhorn just seemed like the right thing to do on this Election Day. Besides, it’s the anniversary of her birth –
in 1908 in St. Louis. While she was born
and raised in the heartland of America, she became a product of and reporter on
the world -- some of the finest reporting, news and feature writing ever done by
an American journalist.
While she wrote about everything from government to society, it was
her war correspondence for which she is most noted, reporting on every
major world conflict
that took place during her 60-year career (she died in 1998 at age 90). In 1999 The Martha Gellhorn Prize in
Journalism (given annually for reporting excellence) was established in her
memory and honor.
Along the way she also became a part
of the lore surrounding Ernest Hemingway, ultimately becoming his third
wife. It was a marriage that grew out of
their time together covering the carnage of the Spanish Civil War. From there they both were reporters during
the Second World War II, although it may have been their competition as writers
that eventually caused them to drift apart.
Gellhorn's
book, The Face of War, is one of the
best you’ll ever read about this remarkable reporter’s work. It’s both a chronicle and a primer on
effectively writing about conflict, its terrors, and aftermath.
Although newswriting was her career
field, 
she also published books of fiction, did travel writing and p.r., and
wrote reams of correspondence. Her
selected letters were published posthumously in 2006. In them, her fierce independence as a writer
shines through.
“I have no intention,”
she once stated, “of being a footnote in someone else’s life.”
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