Luke Mogelson ’05 joined the U.S. National Guard after completing a literature degree at Bennington and went on to become a major journalistic voice about the unrest in Afghanistan and other sites of U.S. conflict. Between 2011 and 2014, he lived in Kabul and reported regularly for The New York Times, where he was a contributing writer. His work at the Times earned him a National Magazine Award in 2014. Since then, he has reported from Syria, West Africa, and Iraq for The New Yorker.

In addition to his journalistic writing, Mogelson is a writer of fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, The Missouri Review, and The Kenyon Review. His first book of stories, These Heroic, Happy Dead, was published in 2016 to glowing reviews.

Mogelson won the 2013 Livingston Award for Young Journalists and has received an award from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.