Elliot Ackerman
| Elliot Ackerman | |
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Ackerman at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
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| Born | April 12, 1980 |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Tufts University, Fletcher School |
| Genre | fiction |
| Notable awards | Silver Star, Purple Heart |
| Years active | 2013 to present |
| Website | |
| www |
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Elliot Ackerman (born April 12, 1980) is an American author, currently based in Istanbul. He is the son of businessman Peter Ackerman and author Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and the brother of mathematician and wrestler Nate Ackerman.
At the age of nine, his family moved to London. The family moved back to Washington, DC, when he was fifteen.
Beginning in 2003, Ackerman spent eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps as both an infantry and special operations officer. He served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. As a Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader, he operated as the primary combat advisor to a 700-man Afghan commando battalion responsible for capture operations against senior Taliban leadership. He also led a 75-man platoon that aided in relief operations in post-Katrina New Orleans. He was also briefly attached to the Ground Branch of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division.
Ackerman served as Chief Operating Officer of Americans Elect, a political organization founded and chaired by his father, Peter Ackerman, and continues to serve on its Board of Advisors. Americans Elect is known primarily for its efforts to stage a national online primary for the 2012 US Presidential Election. As one of its officers, Ackerman was interviewed extensively, notably on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
Ackerman has served on the board of the Afghan Scholars Initiative and as an advisor to the No Greater Sacrifice scholarship fund. Most recently, Ackerman served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration. He currently lives in Istanbul with his wife and two children and writes on the Syrian Civil War.
Ackerman's fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Ecotone and others. He is also a contributor to The Daily Beast, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been interviewed in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Colbert Report, NPR's Talk of the Nation, Meet the Press, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and PBS NewsHour among others.
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