Photo: Andrea Frazzetta

​Ben Mauk was born and raised in Maryland and lives in Berlin.

​He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, and n+1, among many other publications, and his work appears in ​Best American Travel Writing. He was a finalist for the 2018 National Magazine Award for feature writing.

He has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Iowa. He co-founded and directs the Berlin Writers' Workshop.

He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a former Fulbright Scholar, and a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting as well as New York University, where he is a visiting scholar.​

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

2019


2018



​2017
​2015-19
​2014-15​

Winner, Jamal Khashoggi Award for Courageous Journalism
Winner, The Reporting Award, New York University Carter School of Journalism
Fellow, The MacDowell Colony
Finalist, National Magazine Award for feature writing
Grantee, Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award
Citation, Ed Cunningham Award, Overseas Press Club of America
​Winner, Spur Award, Best Short Nonfiction, Western Writers of America
Winner, Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction
Grantee, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
​Young Journalist Fellow, Fulbright Scholar Program