Monica Hesse

Monica Hesse (born ) is an American journalist and author. She is a screens critic for The Washington Post and a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Early life and education Hesse is from Normal, Illinois, where her father, Douglas D. Hesse, taught writing at Illinois State University. Her mother is a therapist. In 2009, she earned a master's degree in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. In 2018, she was appointed the newspaper's first ever gender columnist.

In January 2025, the Post scrapped the paper's "gender columnist" role and reassigned Hesse from the Style/Power section to the Opinions section after Post editors killed an article recently submitted by her. This change was confirmed by Hesse herself in an article she wrote in March 2025.

In late September or early October 2025, Hesse was again reassigned, this time as "a screens critic" for the Style section.

Hesse is the author of several novels, with a focus on the World War II era. and the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, "for columns that convey the anger and dread that many Americans felt about losing their right to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade."

Personal life Hesse lives in University Park, Maryland with her family.

Works 2016 – Girl in the Blue Coat 2017 – American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land 2020 – They Went Left