and dear friend, Junger told me, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
T HE V ITALS
Birthday: January 17, 1962
Born and raised: Belmont, Massachusetts
Current home: New York, New York, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Love life: Married since 2005 to writer Daniela Petrova; no kids
Schooling: BA in cultural anthropology, Wesleyan, 1984
Day job?: No
Honors and awards (partial listing): National Magazine Award, 2000; SAIS-Novartis Prize for journalism; PEN/Winship Award; duPont-Columbia Award for broadcast journalism; 2010 Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival; Oscar nomination for documentary
Restrepo
, 2010
Notable notes:
• All of Junger’s books have been
New York Times
bestsellers.
The Perfect Storm
spent more than three years on the bestseller list.
• The Perfect Storm Foundation, founded in 1998, “provides educational opportunities for children of people in the maritime professions.”
• Sebastian Junger is co-owner, with fellow author Scott Anderson and filmmaker Nanette Burstein, of the New York restaurant Half King, which serves art exhibits and book readings along with “pub food done right.”
Website: www.sebastianjunger.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sebastianjunger
Twitter: @sebastianjunger
T HE C OLLECTED W ORKS
Nonfiction
The Perfect Storm
, 1997
Fire
, 2001
A Death in Belmont
, 2006
War
, 2010
Film Adaptation
The Perfect Storm
, 2000
Documentary
Restrepo
, 2010
Magazine Work
Vanity Fair
, contributing editor
Harper’s
The New York Times Magazine
National Geographic
Outside
Men’s Journal
Sebastian Junger
Why I write
When I’m writing, I’m in an altered state of mind.
I’m at my desk. I usually have some music playing, and a cup of coffee. Back when I smoked I had an ashtray and a cigarette; when I was trying to keep from smoking I always had some Nicorette gum in my mouth.
I’m usually not writing fiction, so I’m not wracking my brain for good ideas. My good ideas come from the world. I harvest them but I don’t have to think them up. All I have to do is take these things I’ve seen—things people have said to me, things I’ve researched, artifacts from the world—and convert them into sequences of words that people want to read. It’s this weird alchemy, a kind of magic. If you do it right, it will get read.
When I write a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter that’s good, I know it, and I know people are going to read it. That knowledge—Oh my God, I’m doing it, I’m doing this thing again that works—it’s just exhilarating. Lots of times I fail at it, and I know it’s not good, and it gets deleted.
But when it’s good…it’s like going on a date that’s going well. There’s an electricity to the process that’s exciting and incomparable to anything else.
Up a tree without a paddle
I wrote my first novel in seventh grade—longhand, in a green-and-white composition notebook. My teacher read it aloud to the class, chapter by chapter. No wonder I didn’t have any friends.
I didn’t give any thought to writing as a profession until the year after I graduated college. I’d written a good thesis; I was on fire the whole time I was writing the thing. I moved to Boston and freelanced once in a while for publications like the
Boston Phoenix.
I got a few short stories published. I got an agent and proceeded to not make a dime for him during the next decade or so. I didn’t achieve any kind of critical mass, creatively or financially. I hacked through a lot of underbrush with a dull knife. In a decade of writing I might have made five thousand dollars. I learned what it feels like to work and work and work with no guaranteed outcome. Or no outcome at all!
I did a lot of random jobs, trying to figure out what to do. I worked in a bar. I worked construction. I managed to get a few assignments from the editor of the
City Paper
, and my articles got some attention. Then, in my late twenties, I got a job as a high
T HE V ITALS
Birthday: January 17, 1962
Born and raised: Belmont, Massachusetts
Current home: New York, New York, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Love life: Married since 2005 to writer Daniela Petrova; no kids
Schooling: BA in cultural anthropology, Wesleyan, 1984
Day job?: No
Honors and awards (partial listing): National Magazine Award, 2000; SAIS-Novartis Prize for journalism; PEN/Winship Award; duPont-Columbia Award for broadcast journalism; 2010 Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival; Oscar nomination for documentary
Restrepo
, 2010
Notable notes:
• All of Junger’s books have been
New York Times
bestsellers.
The Perfect Storm
spent more than three years on the bestseller list.
• The Perfect Storm Foundation, founded in 1998, “provides educational opportunities for children of people in the maritime professions.”
• Sebastian Junger is co-owner, with fellow author Scott Anderson and filmmaker Nanette Burstein, of the New York restaurant Half King, which serves art exhibits and book readings along with “pub food done right.”
Website: www.sebastianjunger.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sebastianjunger
Twitter: @sebastianjunger
T HE C OLLECTED W ORKS
Nonfiction
The Perfect Storm
, 1997
Fire
, 2001
A Death in Belmont
, 2006
War
, 2010
Film Adaptation
The Perfect Storm
, 2000
Documentary
Restrepo
, 2010
Magazine Work
Vanity Fair
, contributing editor
Harper’s
The New York Times Magazine
National Geographic
Outside
Men’s Journal
Sebastian Junger
Why I write
When I’m writing, I’m in an altered state of mind.
I’m at my desk. I usually have some music playing, and a cup of coffee. Back when I smoked I had an ashtray and a cigarette; when I was trying to keep from smoking I always had some Nicorette gum in my mouth.
I’m usually not writing fiction, so I’m not wracking my brain for good ideas. My good ideas come from the world. I harvest them but I don’t have to think them up. All I have to do is take these things I’ve seen—things people have said to me, things I’ve researched, artifacts from the world—and convert them into sequences of words that people want to read. It’s this weird alchemy, a kind of magic. If you do it right, it will get read.
When I write a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter that’s good, I know it, and I know people are going to read it. That knowledge—Oh my God, I’m doing it, I’m doing this thing again that works—it’s just exhilarating. Lots of times I fail at it, and I know it’s not good, and it gets deleted.
But when it’s good…it’s like going on a date that’s going well. There’s an electricity to the process that’s exciting and incomparable to anything else.
Up a tree without a paddle
I wrote my first novel in seventh grade—longhand, in a green-and-white composition notebook. My teacher read it aloud to the class, chapter by chapter. No wonder I didn’t have any friends.
I didn’t give any thought to writing as a profession until the year after I graduated college. I’d written a good thesis; I was on fire the whole time I was writing the thing. I moved to Boston and freelanced once in a while for publications like the
Boston Phoenix.
I got a few short stories published. I got an agent and proceeded to not make a dime for him during the next decade or so. I didn’t achieve any kind of critical mass, creatively or financially. I hacked through a lot of underbrush with a dull knife. In a decade of writing I might have made five thousand dollars. I learned what it feels like to work and work and work with no guaranteed outcome. Or no outcome at all!
I did a lot of random jobs, trying to figure out what to do. I worked in a bar. I worked construction. I managed to get a few assignments from the editor of the
City Paper
, and my articles got some attention. Then, in my late twenties, I got a job as a high
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