Waterston Desert Writing Prize
Taylor Luck – 2025 Finalist
Taylor Luck is a writer, analyst and journalist based in Amman, Jordan. He currently serves as senior Middle East correspondent at The Christian Science Monitor. In his 18-year-career across the Middle East, his narrative nonfiction has explored belonging, tribes, faith, climate change, polarization, democracy and war.
A Midwesterner based in the Middle East, Luck tells personal stories on a global scale. His current project, Beyond the Jordan, is a narrative nonfiction book blending memoir with an exploration of home, identity and a society in upheaval in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
He is committed to elevating under-represented voices in his writing by reporting “from” communities across the Arab world rather than “on” them. Luck previously served as a Global Fellow at The Wilson Center and was an inaugural Moment Institute Middle East Fellow.