Helene Cooper

Who is Helene Cooper?

Helene Cooper is a Liberian-born American journalist who is a White House correspondent for the New York Times. Before that, she was the paper's diplomatic correspondent in Washington, D.C. She joined the Times in 2004 as assistant editorial page editor.

At the Wall Street Journal, Cooper wrote about trade, politics, race, and foreign policy at the Washington and Atlanta bureaus from 1992 to 1997. From 1997 to 1999, she reported on the European Monetary Union from the London bureau. From 1999 to 2002, she was a reporter focusing on international economics; then assistant Washington bureau chief from 2002 to 2004.

In 2008 she published The House at Sugar Beach, a memoir published by Simon & Schuster about the Liberian coup of 1980 and its effect on the Coopers, who were socially and politically elite descendants of American freed slaves who colonized Liberia in the 19th century. The book received critical acclaim and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist in 2008 for autobiography.