Waterston Desert Writing Prize
Patrick Mondaca – 2018 Prize Winner
Patrick Mondaca’s submission, “Adjustment Disorder,” is a memoir about the discovery of personal peace in a Sudanese desert landscape by a combat veteran. The memoir seeks to bring attention to the concept of the “draw” or pull of the desert in the postwar lives of military veterans. Mondaca served in Baghdad, Iraq with the U.S. Army and as a security advisor for a humanitarian organization in South Darfur, Sudan.
He earned an MS in Global Affairs from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Currently he is a researcher, writer, and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mondaca’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, USA Today, The Hill, and U.S. News & World Report, among others. Mondaca lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.