Center on the Future of War fellow Suki Kim wins prestigious Berlin Prize

Each year, Arizona State University's Center on the Future of War supports a group of exceptional writers, scholars and thought leaders working on global security issues as ASU Future of War Fellows at New America.

One of its 2019 class of fellows was recently named a winner of the prestigious Berlin Prize. Suki Kim will join 19 other scholars and artists in Berlin for a semester-long residency involving public lectures, readings and networking events designed to forge transatlantic partnerships and break new transdisciplinary intellectual ground. 

The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin “seeks to enrich transatlantic dialogue in the arts, humanities, and public policy through the development and communication of projects of the highest scholarly merit.”

In Berlin, Kim will continue working on her book "The Portrait of Complicity," a narrative investigative nonfiction book on war and its psychological consequences as seen through North Korea’s ruling class. She visited ASU this spring, presented a public lecture, guest lectured in courses and worked over this past year with undergraduate researchers.

An author of New York Times best-seller "Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korean Elite," Kim is the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea for immersive journalism. Her novel "The Interpreter" was the winner of PEN Open Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her nonfiction has appeared in Harper’s, New York Times, New York Review of Books, and New Republic,where she is a contributing editor. She has been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Open Society fellowships, and her recent TED Talk has drawn millions of viewers. Her essay on fear appears in "The Best American Essays 2018."