Please join the Fletcher Eurasia Club for a lunch seminar with Jen Stout, a journalist, writer, and radio producer who left Russia in 2022 to cover the invasion of Ukraine. She will discuss her new memoir, Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia’s War (2024), providing a firsthand account of her vivid reporting from the frontlines and cities across Ukraine. Bennett Murray, a Fletcher graduate student and former journalist in Russia and Ukraine, will moderate the conversation and touch on his experiences covering the war.

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, millions of lives changed in an instant. Millions of people were suddenly on the move. In this great flow of people was a reporter from Shetland. Jen Stout left Moscow abruptly, ending up on a border post in southeast Romania, from where she began to cover the human cost of Russian aggression. Her first-hand, vivid reporting as she travelled alone, hauling around body armor, brought the war to audiences back home, as she reported from front lines and cities across Ukraine. Stories from the night trains, birthday parties, military hospitals and bunkers: stories from the ground, from a writer with a deep sense of empathy, always seeking to understand the bigger picture, the big questions of identity, history, hopes and fears in this war in Europe.

The Eurasia Club at The Fletcher School seeks to promote a cultural, historical, political, and economic understanding of Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. By bringing together students from diverse backgrounds and meeting with experts and practitioners from Russia and Eurasia, the club aims to create lasting connections among individuals, communities, and the region as a whole. Members of the wider Tufts community and invited guests are also welcome to attend.

Please register via the Microsoft Form here to attend the event in person or let us know if you would like to attend virtually. Please contact us with any questions you might have about the event or if you would like to submit discussion questions for the speaker in advance. Lunch will be served following the conversation. Please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions, and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Jen Stout is an award-winning journalist and author from Scotland. She was an Alfa Fellow in Moscow in 2021-2022; the program was cut short by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and she went to cover the war for outlets such as BBC radio, London Review of Books, Prospect, and the Sunday Post. Her debut book, Night Train to Odesa was published in 2024 and won First Book at the Saltire Society awards. It was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. She previously had jobs in television and radio with the BBC and was a local newspaper reporter. She also lived in Leipzig on a Germany-UK cultural exchange program. Her work in Ukraine was shortlisted for prizes by Amnesty International, the Foreign Press Association, and the Scottish Press Awards. In 2023, she won a Travelling Scholarship from the Society of Authors. Jen grew up in the Shetland Islands and studied Sociology and Russian in Edinburgh, where she now lives.