Phil Zabriskie

Author and Journalist

Phil Zabriskie is the author of the The Kill Switch, a highly-acclaimed Kindle Single about American soldiers and Marines learning to take life in combat and then dealing with this particular aspect of their experience once they return home. Previously, he spent nearly a decade living and working as a journalist overseas, primarily as a staff writer for Time magazine in Asia and the Middle East, covering both Afghanistan and Iraq, along with news and events in Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and elsewhere. He has also written for National Geographic, New York, Fortune, and the Washington Post Magazine—with a particular focus on people from numerous different societies living with trauma and its aftermath—and served as Editorial Director for Doctors Without Borders USA. He has been both a Fellow and a Senior Fellow with the Dart Foundation for Journalism and Trauma; spoken at the State Department, the New America Foundation’s “Future of War” conference, New York University Law School, and, twice, as a visiting author at the Sun Valley Writers Conference. He was recently honored with the Bates Farnham Outstanding Achievement Award by his graduating class (1994) at Princeton University, an award “presented to a member of our class who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in his or her life” and “who makes a deep and meaningful contribution to the world around them.”

Participant In:

Trauma and its Aftereffects, Part I: War and Genocide

Saturday, May 2, 2015
2:30-4:30 pm

Past Event

What does it mean to be a survivor of the traumatic violence of war and genocide, as victim or perpetrator—or descendant of either? What are the implications for the individual and collective conscience of doing violence to others sanctioned by the state or consecrated—or condemned—by one’s culture or that of other cultures?