Celia Williams Dugger (born July 3, 1958, in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

) is an American journalist who is deputy science editor of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. Along with her husband Barry Bearak, currently a ''New York Times'' staff writer and visiting professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, Dugger served as co-bureau chief of ''The New York Times'' South Asia bureau in

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Ho ...

from 1998 to 2002. From 2008 to 2011, she and Bearak became bureau chiefs in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. Ms. Dugger is the daughter of Jean and Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of the influential '' Texas Observer.''

Awards

In 2006, Celia Dugger and

Donald McNeil Jr. Donald Gerard McNeil Jr. (born February 1, 1954) is an American journalist. He was a science and health reporter for ''The New York Times'' where he reported on epidemics, including HIV/AIDS and the COVID-19 pandemic. His reporting on COVID-19 ...

won the

Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...

award for best international reporting in the print medium showing a concern for the human condition, for their series "Diseases on the Brink." The same series was also honored with a

Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism is a journalism award named after Robert F. Kennedy and awarded by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The annual awards are issued in several categories and were est ...

that year.Robert F. Kennedy Memorial
Accessed May 3, 2007. She has won the

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

for Journalism twice. In 1992 she won a James Aronson Award honorable mention.

Personal life

Dugger and Bearak have two sons, Sam and Max. Celia Dugger has traveled all over Africa, South America and Asia covering poverty and health.

References

1958 births Living people Writers from Austin, Texas The New York Times writers 20th-century American journalists Livingston Award winners for Local Reporting {{Texas-bio-stub