Sebastian Junger

One of only a few superstar journalists of his era, Sebastian Junger spent his career observing and telling the stories of men who are pushed to their limits. Hurled into the national spotlight with the unbridled success of his first book The Perfect Storm (1997), Junger leveraged this success in the journalistic world and became one of a handful of journalists who could choose his own assignments. He was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and contributor to ABC News and authored three other books: Fire (2001), A Death In Belmont (2006), and War (2010). In addition to his writing, Junger teamed with photojournalist Tim Heatherington to direct the Adademy Award® nominated documentary "Restrepo" (2010), and was the solo director of "Korengal"(2014).

Born in January 1962, to a painter mother and physicist father, Junger struggled to find his voice while writing freelance articles after graduating from Wesleyan University in 1984, but an accident with a chainsaw while trimming trees (his day job at the time) inspired him to write a book about dangerous jobs. The first dangerous job he researched was smoke jumping. The second dangerous job was commercial fishing, focusing on a Gloucester sword fishing boat lost during an enormous storm in October 1991. The second story became The Perfect Storm. Published in 1997, The Perfect Storm became an instant success. The book stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for over three years and announced Sebastian Junger as the next Ernest Hemingway, a writer telling stories about men in action and adventure. There was also a blockbuster movie based on the book, released in 2000 and starring Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney.

The huge success of The Perfect Storm vaulted Junger to the apex of journalism and allowed him to write his own ticket. He became a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and traveled the world reporting from some of the most conflicted spots and profiling men who were taking part in and sometimes orchestrating the deadly battles. His second book, Fire (2001), was a collection of previously published articles that included some of his writing on dangerous jobs. His smoke jumping research provided the title story, about firefighters battling the 1992 Flicker Creek fire, in Idaho. "Blowup: What Went Wrong At Storm King Mountain" was another man versus fire story in the collection, detailing the devastating 1994 Colorado fire where 14 firefighters lost their lives. But the collection also made clear that Junger had discovered the most dangerous job: soldier. Some of other articles in the collection were dispatches from war torn Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and there were even a couple of articles from Afghanistan, where Junger would spend a good deal of the next decade.

A Death In Belmont (2006) was a departure for Junger, but still close to home. An investigation of the 1963 murder of a woman a few blocks from Junger's home, the book took the stance that murderer was not Roy Smith, the African-American convicted of the crime, but in fact the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to 13 other murders and was actually doing work around young Sebastian's house the day of the murder.

In 2007 and 2008, Junger and photojournalist Tim Heatherington embedded with a US Army Platoon in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, where a small group of soldiers were tasked with fighting the Taliban in one of the most active battlegrounds of the war. Junger and Heatherington's reporting became the basis for the documentary film "Restrepo" (2010). The no-holds-barred glimpse onto the modern battlefield was universally praised, winning the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

In 2011, Tim Heatherington was killed while on assignment covering the civil war in Libya. Bereft at the loss of his creative partner, Junger went on to write War (2010), again focusing on the soldiers and their experiences in Korengal. He directed another documentary, "Korengal" (2014), based on footage he and Heatherington had shot, but didn't use in "Restrepo." While "Restrepo" was intended to show the viewer the realities of combat, as a companion piece, "Korengal" attempted to show the effects of war on the soldiers on the front lines.