Bio

Nick McDonell is the author of the internationally bestselling novel Twelve. Written when he was seventeen and published in 23 countries to date, Twelve has also been made into a major motion picture directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Ellen Barkin, Chace Crawford, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. Following the publication of that novel by Grove Press, McDonell attended Harvard University, wrote his second novel, The Third Brother, and began to report for Harper’s, Time, The New York Daily News, Liberation, Die Zeit, and other publications.

He has embedded with the US Army and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, covered the 2008 US Presidential election, and worked around the world, from the Arctic Circle to Mongolia to Darfur. In 2008, his extended essay on reactions to the Iraq war, Guerre à Harvard, was a French bestseller. In 2009, his latest novel, An Expensive Education, drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John LeCarre and was optioned for film. His most recent book, The End of Major Combat Operations, an account of the US withdrawal from Iraq, was published by McSweeny’s Books in spring 2010. McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City.