Brian Mockenhaupt wrote the Byliner.com original "The Living and the Dead." The story chronicles the traumatic experience of a group of Marines in Afghanistan, as well as their difficulty adjusting to life once stateside. He won the 2013 Michael Kelly Award for the story, and was also a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Mockenhaupt is a contributing editor to Readers Digest and Esquire, and is the nonfiction editor of the Journal of Military Experience. He writes regularly for The Atlantic and Outside, and his work has also appeared in Pacific Standard, Backpacker, The New York Times Magazine and Chicago.
After serving two tours in Iraq as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division, Mockenhaupt has written exclusively on military and veteran affairs.
He was the first in-studio guest for the podcast, as he was visiting Ashland University for the River Teeth Nonfiction Conference.