Nick McDonell

Nick McDonell, born in 1984, is writer of novels, journalism, and political theory. He studied literature at Harvard and international relations at St. Anthony's College, Oxford. His fiction has been published in twenty two languages and appeared on bestseller lists around the world, regularly earning comparisons to the work of John Le Carré and Graham Greene. A film adaptation of his first novel, Twelve, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. His academic work on nomadism — The Civilization of Perpetual Movement — was published in 2016 by Hurst & Co. and distributed by the Oxford University Press. In review, The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "This is the book about nomads that Bruce Chatwin spent a good part of his life trying, unsuccessfully, to write."

As a reporter for The London Review of Books, TIME, TheNewYorker.com, and Harper’s, Nick has embedded with the United States Army and Marines, the Afghan Special Forces, the African Union Mission to Darfur, and most recently, the Iraqi Special Forces during the battle for Mosul in 2017. Nick’s latest book, The Bodies In Person: An Account of Civilian Casualties in American Wars, was published by The Blue Rider Press in September of 2018. Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, called it: “a gift to future historians and a gesture to moral philosophers. It helps us to see the world as it is while gently encouraging us to ask how it might be better.” Nick is a currently working with the international non-profit organization GiveDirectly on a cash transfer program aimed at the reconstruction of West Mosul.