Biography

Christopher P. Winner

Journalist. Essayist. Memoirist. Witness to memory, conflict, and quiet truths.

Christopher P. Winner is a veteran journalist and essayist whose body of work spans continents and decades, blending deeply personal narrative with sharp cultural observation. Based in Rome for much of his life, Winner has written with elegant precision on topics ranging from papal politics and war to language, memory, and human vulnerability.

Father and son – Positano, Italy.

A Career in Reporting and Reflection
Winner began his journalism career with Rome Daily American after graduating from Columbia University in New York. He later worked with the Rome Daily American, the Rome bureaus of Newsweek, United Press International, and later the Washington Star. He also served as European correspondent for USA Today in London. Following that stint, he became editor of The Prague Post. Throughout his career, Winner gained a reputation for blending reportage with reflection, favoring atmosphere and insight over sensationalism.

Winner pictured with family friend, Italian racing driver and entrepreneur, Enzo Ferrari.

The author is recent years with a friend.

Early Life & Legacy
Born in Paris to a family rich with history and shadowed by war, Winner is the son of a Polish exile who survived Fascist Rome under a forged identity, and a Brooklyn-born father whose love of language and philosophical inquiry shaped Winner’s own voice. These ancestral echoes—marked by displacement, identity, and resilience—have deeply informed his work.

Above: A newborn Winner with his mother.

Style and Themes
Winner’s writing is lyrical, direct, and meditative. Whether evoking his father’s invented vocabulary games, recalling a haunting moment at a crime scene, or exploring the cultural habits of modern Italy, his essays are known for their intimacy, clarity, and moral weight. He writes as a humanist, with a quiet skepticism toward power and a reverence for language.

A Slowing Voice
In recent years, Winner has suffered near-total loss of eyesight due to glaucoma. This profound change has greatly reduced his ability to write, slowing the pace of his output but not extinguishing his insight. Though his pen is less active, the voice remains—introspective, wry, and generous. He continues to shape memory and experience into meaning, often revisiting older pieces with renewed emotional clarity.

Jordan Bonfante of Time Magazine, left, and the author waiting for smoke in August 1978, radios and walkies-talkies in hand.

A rare moment of calm between Winner’s parents, whose marriage endured thirteen turbulent years. Below: The view from the author’s apartment in Rome, a city where he has spent much of his life reflecting, writing, and observing the city.

A Writer of the Then and the Now
Winner describes himself as a writer of the then and the now—someone drawn to the layered intersections of past and present. His body of work spans memoir and personal history, politics, war and conflict, language and memory, cultural criticism, illness, aging, loss, and the complexities of human relationships.