Suzannah Lessard | |
---|---|
Born | Suzannah Terry Lessard December 1, 1944 Islip, New York, U.S. |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Notable awards | Whiting Award (1995) |
Parents | John Ayres Lessard Alida Mary White |
Relatives | Stanford White (great-grandfather) |
Suzannah Terry Lessard (born December 1, 1944) [1] [2] is an American writer of literary non-fiction. She has written memoir, reportorial pieces, essays, and opinion.
Lessard was born in Islip, New York to John Ayres Lessard and Alida Mary (White). [1] She is the great-granddaughter of architect Stanford White. [3] She has taught at Columbia School of the Arts, Wesleyan University, The New School, George Mason University, George Washington University, and Goucher College MFA in Creative Non-fiction. [4]
She was one of the first editors of the Washington Monthly from 1971 to 1974. [5] From 1975 to 1995 she was a staff writer at The New Yorker Magazine [6] She has also published in New York Times Magazine, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, and Wilson Quarterly and Harvard Design.
Fellowships
She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family (1996). Her next book, Dreamscape: Finding Our Way in a Time of Epochal Change was, as of fall 2011, in editorial process. It is a reportorial essay about the experience of going from the Industrial Age to the Information Age with changes in the form and meaning of landscape and place as the point of entry.
Her next book, The View From a Small Mountain: Reading the American Landscape was published in 2017. [8]
In 2019, Lessard published The Absent Hand:Reimagining Our American Landscape which Michael Kimmelman described as “thoughtful, exquisitely written collection of interconnected essays…” [9]
Stanford White was an American architect and a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms at the turn of the 20th century. White designed many houses for the wealthy, in addition to numerous civic, institutional and religious buildings. His temporary Washington Square Arch was so popular that he was commissioned to design a permanent one. White's design principles embodied the "American Renaissance".
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LESSARD, SUZANNAH TERRY, writer; b. Islip, N.Y., Dec. 1, 1944; d. John Ayres and Alida Mary (White)