Marie-Helene Carleton

Marie-Hélène Carleton is a writer, photographer and filmmaker, based out of New York City, though she’s spent the last year living in upstate New York, New Hampshire and Wyoming, and has worked extensively overseas in conflict and post-conflict regions including Pakistan, Lebanon, Southeastern Turkey and Iraq.

She is the co-founder of Four Corners Media, a documentary organization working in still photography, video, and print media. Her work can be found at www.fourcornersmedia.net

Marie-Helene is currently editing a feature-length documentary film that she shot with Micah Garen in Iraq in 2004 about the looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq.

Marie-Helene is the co-author, with Micah Garen, of “American Hostage”, published in October 2005 by Simon and Schuster. “American Hostage” is a memoir of working in Iraq as a filmmaker and reporter, and Micah’s subsequent kidnapping, and her involvement, with many others, to help bring about his release. The book follows the ten days of the kidnapping, and alternates between their two voices and experiences.

“American Hostage” received two stars on Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews who called it “an incredible told with intensity by two very lucky people”.

Chris Mathews, of Hardball, said "What a great book", and Washington Post Book World wrote, "The authors' nuanced accounts of their psychological rollercoaster rides make their book consistently compelling."

Marie-Helene has written stories, taken photographs done photo essays, and produced short documentaries for the New York Times, the New York Times Digital, the Financial Times, the Financial Times Magazine, the Associated Press, APTN, PBS, Archaeology magazine, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L’Espresso, Westside Productions, and Oxygen Media.

Her writing and photographs have also appeared in the book “The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad”, published by Abrams in 2004, and her photography has appeared in the book “Water Culture”, published by Trolley in 2003.

Marie-Helene is a member of the National Press Photographers Association, the PEN American Center and has attended the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation.

Marie-Hélène has been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning and has been interviewed about her experiences in Iraq and hostage situations on National Public Radio, MSNBC Hardball, Democracy Now, the Today Show, Good Morning America, among others. Marie- Hélène has lectured about the hostage experience, Iraq, and women in Iraq at Yale University, The Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Davidson College, the University of Indiana at Bloomington and York College.

She graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she received a BA in Political Science and a BA in French Literature, and got an MA degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations (SAIS) where she focused on refugee studies.