Patrick Mondaca served in Baghdad, Iraq as a Sergeant with the Connecticut Army National Guard’s 143rd Military Police Company in 2003. After being discharged, he returned to civilian policing until leaving to work as a field safety and security officer for a humanitarian organization in South Darfur, Sudan from September 2007 to September 2008.
A graduate of Central Connecticut State University, he also holds a Master of Science in Global Affairs from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He won the Waterston Desert Writing Prize in 2018, and his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report. He lives in Montclair, NJ.