Alec Wilkinson

Last updated

Alec Wilkinson
Born (1952-03-29) March 29, 1952 (age 71)
Occupationwriter
Employer The New Yorker
Children1
Relatives Leland Wilkinson (brother)
Amie Wilkinson (niece)
Awards Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

Alec Wilkinson (born March 29, 1952) [1] is an American writer who has been on the staff of The New Yorker since 1980. [2] According to The Philadelphia Inquirer he is among the "first rank of" contemporary American (20th and early 21st century) "literary journalists...(reminiscent) of Naipaul, Norman Mailer and Agee". [3]

Contents

Career

Wilkinson is the author of eleven books. His most recent book is A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age. [4] Before that, he published The Ice Balloon in 2012, an account of the Swedish visionary aeronaut S.A. Andree's attempt, in 1897, to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. [5] [6] He is also the author of "Sister Sorry," a play based on "The Confession," [7] a story of his that appeared in The New Yorker in 1993. “Sister Sorry” had its premiere at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts during their 2021 season. [8]

Before Wilkinson was a writer, he spent a year as a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, which is the subject of Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police, [9] and before that he was a rock and roll musician, playing in a number of bands, including one in Berkeley, California with Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan's longtime bass player and bandleader.[ citation needed ]

Wilkinson began writing when he was 24, showing work to William Maxwell, his father's friend, who in addition to being a novelist and short-story writer, had for forty years been an editor of fiction at The New Yorker. [10] They worked together closely for years. Maxwell died in July 2000. My Mentor describes their friendship.

Personal life

Wilkinson is married, has a son, and lives in New York City. He is the brother of computer scientist Leland Wilkinson.

Awards

Wilkinson's honors include a Lyndhurst Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1987. [2] [11]

Publications

Books

Articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Wilson</span> American writer and literary critic (1895–1972)

Edmund Wilson Jr. was an American writer, literary critic and journalist. He is widely regarded as one of the most important literary critics of the 20th century. Wilson began his career as a journalist, writing for publications such as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. He helped to edit The New Republic, served as chief book critic for The New Yorker, and was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Wilson was the author of more than twenty books, including Axel's Castle, Patriotic Gore, and a work of fiction, Memoirs of Hecate County. He was a friend of many notable figures of the time, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos. His scheme for a Library of America series of national classic works came to fruition through the efforts of Jason Epstein after Wilson's death. He was a two-time winner of the National Book Award and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

Louis Menand is an American critic, essayist, and professor, who wrote the Pulitzer-winning book The Metaphysical Club (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span> American book publishing company

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. As of 2016 the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Williams Straus Jr.</span>

Roger Williams Straus Jr. was co-founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a New York book publishing company, and member of the Guggenheim family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Barthelme</span> American writer, editor, and professor

Donald Barthelme Jr. was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction, and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Frederick Seidel is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Grossman</span> Israeli author

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

Robert Adams Gottlieb was an American writer and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker.

Stuart Dybek is an American writer of fiction and poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suketu Mehta</span> New York-based author

Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. His autobiographical account of his experiences in Mumbai, Maximum City, was published in 2004. The book, based on two and a half years of research, explores the underbelly of the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Ross (music critic)</span> American music critic (born 1968)

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).

<i>Hooking Up</i>

Hooking Up is a collection of essays and a novella by American author Tom Wolfe, a number of which were earlier published in popular magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Kleinzahler</span> American poet (born 1949)

August Kleinzahler is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliza Griswold</span> American writer

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, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Wray (novelist)</span> American novelist

John Henderson, better known by his pen name John Wray, is a novelist and regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Born in Washington, D.C., of an American father and Austrian mother, he is a citizen of both countries. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, attended the Nichols School for his high school education, and then graduated from Oberlin College, majoring in Biology. He dropped out of graduate school twice: first from New York University's M.F.A. program in poetry, where he won an Academy of American Poets Prize, and then, a few years later, from Columbia University's fiction program. He currently lives in Mexico City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Galassi</span> American poet

Jonathan Galassi has served as the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is currently the Chairman and Executive Editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blanche Knopf</span> American book publisher

Blanche Wolf Knopf was the president of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf Sr., with whom she established the firm in 1915. Blanche traveled the world seeking new authors and was especially influential in the publication of European and Latin American literature in the United States.

Ange Mlinko is an American poet and critic. The author of six books of poetry, Mlinko was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2014–15. She teaches poetry at the University of Florida, and is the poetry editor of Subtropics. Her most recent book, Venice, was published in April 2022.

Marie K. Rutkoski in Hinsdale, Illinois is an American children's writer, and professor at Brooklyn College. She has three younger siblings. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a B.A. in English with a minor in French in 1999, and then her English M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and 2006 respectively. She lives in Brooklyn with her family and two cats, Cloud and Firefly.

List of the published work of George Packer, American journalist, novelist, and playwright.

References

  1. "Alec Wilkinson". Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (Collection). Gale. 2011. ISBN   9780787639952 . Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  2. 1 2 "Alec Wilkinson". The New Yorker . Retrieved December 14, 2021.
  3. "The Bitter Lot of Sugar Cane Workers," Phillip Gourevitch, Sunday, October 1, 1989, p. 123.
  4. Alec Wilkinson, A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  5. Hellman, David (March 18, 2007). "Adventurer with a Maverick Streak". SF Gate.com. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
  6. "Lesson Learned: Don't Fly To North Pole In A Balloon". NPR.org. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
  7. "The Confession". The New Yorker . September 27, 1993.
  8. "Sister Sorry".
  9. Wilkinson, Alec (1982). Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police. Ruminator Books. ISBN   9781886913325.
  10. Hampton, Wilborn (August 1, 2000). "William Maxwell, 91, Author and Legendary Editor, Dies". New York Times . Retrieved December 14, 2021.
  11. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Alec Wilkinson". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation . Retrieved December 14, 2021.