Sarah Esther Maslin

Sarah Esther Maslin (2015) is a young freelancer who has spent the past two years reporting in the village of El Mozote, where U.S.-trained troops killed hundreds of civilians in 1981 at the start of El Salvador’s bloody civil war. Maslin is interested in what makes people commit violence and how societies recover–or don’t. She is writing a book about El Mozote families, the limits of truth and reconciliation, gang violence in El Salvador, and the long-term effects of trauma on a community and a country.

A 2014 Yale graduate, Maslin has reported for the metro desk of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, edited the Yale Daily News Magazine, and written for The Atlantic magazine and publications. She received the Yale English Department’s John Hersey Prize in 2014 for her outstanding journalism that “reflects engagement with moral and social issues, responsible reportage, and craftsmanship.”

Her essay on greed and altruism in a New Haven pawn shop, “The Pawn King,” won the Norman Mailer College Non-Fiction Writing Award and was published online by The Atlantic.