Wil S. Hylton | |
|---|---|
 Hylton at the 2014 Gaithersburg Book Festival | |
| Born | Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Notable works | Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II |
Wil S. Hylton is an American journalist. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine[1] and has published cover stories for The New Yorker,[2] Rolling Stone,[3] Esquire,[4] Harper's,[5] Details, GQ,[6] New York,[7][8] Outside,[9] and many others.
Hylton was born in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Baltimore City College high school. He enrolled in Kenyon College for a year before being expelled.[10]
Hylton began publishing articles in The Baltimore Sun as a teenager,[11] and was writing for major magazines by his early twenties.[3][12][4] In 1999 he bicycled across Cuba for Esquire,[13] climbed the Ecuadorean Andes for Details, and wrote about Hugh Hefner for Rolling Stone.[14]
At 24, Hylton was hired as a Contributing Editor at Esquire, where he wrote about the invasion of Afghanistan,[15] attempts to patent the human genome,[16] and the prosecution of alleged nuclear spy Wen Ho Lee.[17] After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hylton became a Washington Correspondent for GQ, publishing criticism of the war[18][19] and drafting articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney.[20][21] He was the first journalist to interview Joe Darby, the whistleblower at Abu Ghraib prison.[22]
Hylton was hired by The New York Times Magazine as a Contributing Writer in 2010.[1] In October 2011, Hugo Lindgren, editor of The New York Times Magazine, wrote, "By now you should know that when you see Wil's byline on a piece, it doesn't really matter what it's about. Just read it.”[23] Hylton has written for the magazine about bioterrorism,[24] the search for Air France Flight 447,[25] the influence of Breitbart News,[26] and the prosecution of police officers after the death of Freddie Gray.[27] His February 8, 2015 article about the family detention policy to imprison Central American women and children[28] was cited by a federal judge in an injunction to suspend the policy two weeks later.[29] His 2016 profile of the painter Chuck Close was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing.[30]
In 2018, Hylton stated on The Daily that he was conducting secret interviews with the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López, who at the time was under house arrest.[31][32]
Hylton is a recipient of the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Journalism by the Medill School of Journalism[33] and his articles have been anthologized in the books "Best Political Writing," "Best Music Writing," and "Best Business Stories."[34] He is a Special Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University[35] and a member of the faculty at the MFA program in creative nonfiction at Goucher College.[36]
Hylton lives in Baltimore; he is divorced with two children.[37]