Wendy Lesser | |
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Born | Santa Monica, California, U.S. | March 20, 1952
Education | Harvard University (BA) King's College, Cambridge (BPhil) University of California, Berkeley (PhD) |
Genre | non-fiction |
Wendy Lesser (born March 20, 1952) is an American critic, writer, and editor based in Berkeley, California. [1] She is the founding editor of the arts journal The Threepenny Review , and the author of a novel and several works of nonfiction, including most recently a biography of the architect Louis Kahn, for which she won the 2017 Marfield Prize. [2]
Lesser was born in 1952 in Santa Monica, California and moved in 1955 to Palo Alto, California, where she was raised. [3] [4] [5] She is the daughter of Murray Lesser, an engineer and writer, and Millicent Dillon, a writer. [1] She earned a B.A. at Harvard University in 1973; a B.Phil. at King's College, Cambridge, in 1975; and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982. [1]
She is the author of several books, including a novel, The Pagoda in the Garden (Other Press, 2005), and the nonfiction book Why I Read (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dedalus Foundation, and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, among other places.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century". She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."
Harold Witter Bynner, also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures there.
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.
Jane Kramer is an American journalist. She began her writing career at the Village Voice, moving to The New Yorker in 1964, where she remains a staff writer. Her books Allen Ginsberg in America (1969) and Honor to the Bride (1970), based on her travels in Morocco, were developed from long-form New Yorker articles.
Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.
Alex Ross is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Ross has been a staff member of The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His extensive writings include performance and record reviews, industry updates, cultural commentary, and historical narratives in the realm of classical music. He has written three well-received books: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007), Listen to This (2011), and Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (2020).
Meghan Elizabeth Daum is an American author, essayist, podcaster, and journalist.
Vivian Gornick is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist.
Sylvia Alderyn Brownrigg is an American author. She is the author of seven books of fiction. Brownrigg's books have been on The New York Times notable fiction lists and Los Angeles Times and Kirkus books of the year. Her children's book, Kepler's Dream, published under the name Juliet Bell, was turned into an independent film in 2017. She won a Lambda Literary Award in 2002 for Pages for You and published the sequel to that book in 2017. Brownrigg's reviews and criticism have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, New Statesman, Los Angeles Times, and The Believer.
Eliza Griswold is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and poet. Griswold is currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She is the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, a 2018 New York Times Notable Book and a Times Critics’ Pick, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2019. Griswold was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a former Nieman Fellow and a current Berggruen Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.
Jonathan Galassi has served as the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is currently the Chairman and Executive Editor.
Nathaniel Rich is an American novelist and essayist. Rich is the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was an editor for The Paris Review, and has contributed articles and essays to several major magazines, including The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Review of Books.
Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic.
Natalie Kusz is an American memoirist.
Phillip M. Hoose is an American writer of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles. His first published works were written for adults, but he turned his attention to children and young adults to keep up with his daughters. His work has been well received and honored more than once by the children's literature community. He won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Nonfiction, for The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004), and the National Book Award, Young People's Literature, for Claudette Colvin (2009).
James Miller is an American writer and academic. He is known for writing about Michel Foucault, philosophy as a way of life, social movements, popular culture, intellectual history, eighteenth century to the present; radical social theory and history of political philosophy. He currently teaches at The New School.
Shane McCrae is an American poet, and is currently Poetry Editor of Image.
Catherine Lacey is an American writer.
Daniel Immerwahr is an American historian, professor, and associate department chair of history at Northwestern University.
External audio | |
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Wendy Lesser, The Poet and the Poem 2017-18 Series |