IN THE ZONE

Clarissa Ward, whose war reporting for CNN opens eyes and melts hearts, recently sat down with Oprah to talk about her searing and inspirational memoir, On All Fronts, and why Ward feels compelled not to avert her eyes but to run toward danger.

OPRAH: Can I just say how thrilled I am to talk to you today? You're one of those people I've been watching from the sidelines for years. Every time I see you in any reporting situation, I think about what Maya Angelou said to me the very first time she met me. I'd begged her to let me interview her. I said: "Just give me five minutes. Please, ma'am, just give me five minutes." The interview happened. Four minutes and 58 seconds into our conversation, Maya looked at me and said: "Who are you, girl?" like I was really something. That's how I feel when I watch you: Who is this woman? So who are you, girl?

CLARISSA WARD: I'm speechless, honestly, and it's really hard to make me speechless. Thank you. I'm just someone who is compelled to go out to the furthest corners of the earth and make connections with people and tell stories in a way that I hope we can all relate to, even if we've never been to that place and don't speak the language, don't know about the culture or the religion, or even share the same values. That's why I got started doing this, and that's why I keep doing it.

OW: We've seen you in Afghanistan. We've seen you in Yemen. We've seen you in Syria. We've seen you in Iraq. What is different about Ukraine?

CW: The main thing that strikes you when you're covering the war in Ukraine is that it's the largest ground invasion in Europe since World War II and has had a seismic ripple effect. In my lifetime as a reporter, the only other commensurate event in terms of galvanizing such a huge international reaction was 9/11. What I've learned over the years is that it's better to stop trying to predict how the world will change and focus on telling the stories of the people whose lives are so impacted by those changes as they're playing out.