Michael Meyer (travel writer)

Michael Meyer is an American travel writer and the author of In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China and The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. He graduated from University of Wisconsin–Madison. He first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. Following Peace Corps, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied writing under Adam Hochschild and Maxine Hong Kingston.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Reader’s Digest, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, and on This American Life.

In China, he has represented the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, training China’s UNESCO World Heritage Site managers in preservation practices.^[1]

He lives in Singapore and Pittsburgh, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching Nonfiction writing. ^[2]

After a five year clearance delay, his book The Last Days of Old Beijing was published in mainland China.^[3]

Awards

• 2015 Lowell Thomas Award winner for Best Travel Book
• 2011 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2010 Fellow, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library
• 2009 Whiting Award
• Lowell Thomas Award winner for travel writing

Works

• "The Last Days of Old Beijing". National Geographic Intelligent Traveler. May 13, 2009.

Books

• The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. Walker & Company. 2009. ISBN 978-0-8027-1750-4. (book interview)
• In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China. Bloomsbury. 2015. ISBN 978-1-6204-0286-3. (book interview and book talk)

References

1. http://us.macmillan.com/AuthorDetails.aspx?AuthorKey=4513
2. http://www.writing.pitt.edu/people/faculty/michael-meyer
3. Meyer, Michael (August 9, 2013). "See You Again, Old Beijing: My book was banned in China for five years. Then they cleared it—and let me visit on a book tour". Slate.

External links

• "Author's website"
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• GREGORY COWLES (October 30, 2009). "Stray Questions for: Michael Meyer". The New York Times.
• "Michael Meyer living in his Dazhalan Beijing hutong", British Television - Paul Merton