Thanks to The School of Writing at The New School, as well as the tireless efforts of their students and faculty, we are able to provide interviews with each of the NBCC Awards Finalists for the publishing year 2013 in our 30 Books 2013 series.
Marina Petrova, on behalf of the School of Writing at The New School and the NBCC, interviewed David Finkel, via phone, about his book Thank You for Your Service (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux), which is among the final five selections, in the category of Nonfiction, for the 2013 NBCC awards.
David Finkel is the author of The Good Soldiers, listed a best book of 2009 by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Slate.com, and The Boston Globe, and winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. He is a staff writer for The Washington Post, and is also the leader of the Post’s national reporting team. He won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about U.S.-funded democracy efforts in Yemen, and the MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2012. Finkel lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two daughters.
Marina Petrova is an MFA candidate at The New School, concentrating in nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Calliope Anthology, Late Night Library and The Brooklyn Rail.