Meet the Author Peter Hessler

April 17, 2021 10:00 am Hosted by David Webber
Peter Hessler grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and is a 1988 Hickman High School graduate. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000. He is the magazine’s correspondent in China, a role he also held from 2000 until 2007. From 2011 to 2016, he was based in Cairo, where he covered the events of the Egyptian Arab Spring. His subjects have included archeology in both China and Egypt, a factory worker in Shenzhen, a garbage collector in Cairo, a small-town druggist in rural Colorado, and Chinese lingerie dealers in Upper Egypt. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, a small Chinese city on the Yangtze River. He is the author of five books, including a trilogy about the ten-plus years that he spent in China: “River Town”; “Oracle Bones,” which was a National Book Award finalist; and “Country Driving.“ His book about Egypt, “The Buried,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the winner of an American Society of Magazine Editors Award and in 2011 was named a MacArthur Fellow. He lives in Chengdu, China.
He and David will discuss his five books, but also his writing for the New Yorker on the subject of China. (biography source: The New Yorker magazine)