Photo: Andrea Frazzetta

​Ben Mauk lives in Berlin.

​He writes for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. He is writing a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

He co-founded and directs the Berlin Writers' Workshop and is a contributing editor at The Ballot. He has taught English literature and writing at the University of Iowa. He is part of the mentorship collective PERIPLUS.

He is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award and his work has appeared twice in Best American Travel Writing. His story for Virginia Quarterly Review about a year in the life of a German asylum town was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for feature writing. He won the Reporting Award from NYU and the inaugural Jamal Khashoggi Award for Courageous Journalism for his coverage of the persecution of minorities in Xinjiang. In 2021, he developed and wrote an immersive V.R. documentary for The New Yorker on life inside a Chinese reeducation camp which has won jury prizes at SXSW, VRHAM!, and the NewImages Festival.
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He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a former Fulbright Scholar, a MacDowell Calderwood Journalism Fellow, and a five-time Pulitzer Center grantee.​ He is represented by Adam Eaglin of The Cheney Agency.

​He writes an occasional newsletter.