May Jeong

May Jeong (2017) has been reporting from Afghanistan since January 2013. She has written for American and British publications: The New York Times, Intercept, Guardian, London Review of Books, as well as ongoing assignments for Harper’s, New York Times Magazine and others. Through 2015 and 2016, she conducted two major investigations, one on the bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz, and another on a drone strike that killed an entire family in Kunar. Since 2013, she has covered various aspects of America’s ongoing war in the country – the results of drone strikes, airstrikes, suicide attacks, as well as failures in border policy, empathy and development theory. She was nominated for the Kurt Schork Award in 2016 for her work. Previously she worked for Reuters newswire, Canada’s Globe and Mail and the Daily Star in Beirut. She has also lived in India and Pakistan.

At Carey, she hopes to write the definitive take on the war in Afghanistan through the experience of Helmand province, where the civil war between the US-backed Afghan government forces and the Taliban insurgents has been the deadliest. She plans to tell the story of the war through one division stationed in a check post in the Helmand district — the last one belonging to government forces — and the five men who have fought for its control. She also hopes to develop a project appropriate for the Trumpian era.