C.J. Chivers is a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine, where he covers conflict, crime, the arms trade, human rights, and the effects of organized violence on both those who wage it and those who suffer from it. As a foreign correspondent, he has covered war,  uprisings, crackdowns and terrorism across the former Soviet sphere, Central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, including in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, the Republic of Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Russia, Syria, Uganda, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. He was present at the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and at the siege of Public School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia in 2004. His recent work focuses on rapidly advancing new weapons and tactics emerging in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Chivers is the author of two non-fiction books -- THE GUN, an examination of the origins and proliferation of the world's most abundant firearm, and THE FIGHTERS, a profile of six combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq that traces the related arcs of the two wars. The former was a "Best Book" pick by The Atlantic and The Washington Post, and the latter was a New York Times best seller and remains a "Best History" selection on Amazon.com. 

A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Chivers teaches war journalism at Columbia University and at Brown. 

In 2007 Chivers received a National Magazine Award and a Michael Kelly Award for the reconstruction in Esquire magazine of the terrorist siege in Beslan. In 2009 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of combat in Afghanistan. For coverage of wars in Libya and Afghanistan in 2011 he received a George Polk Award and the Hal Boyle Award from the Overseas Press Club (OPC) for best newspaper reporting from abroad. In 2014 the OPC awarded him its prize for investigative reporting for an expose of American and Iraqi troops wounded by abandoned chemical weapons; the report prompted the Pentagon to apologize. In 2017 he received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in The New York Times Magazine on a Marine war veteran imprisoned in Illinois for a crime he could not recall; as a result of the reporting, the veteran was released from prison. His investigation in 2023 of the death under court-mandated mental health treatment of former Army Major Ian Fishback, an anti-torture whistleblower, led to an admission by the Department of Veteran Affairs that it had failed to fulfll its responsibilities for the former officer's care.

Before becoming a journalist,  Chivers was an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, including service in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and during peacekeeping duties after riots in Los Angeles in 1992. He was honorably discharged as a captain in 1994. A native of upstate New York, he resides in coastal Rhode Island, where with his family he is engaged in commercial fishing and oyster aquaculture.