Michael Meyer

Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 as one of its first Peace Corps volunteers. He is the author of three critically acclaimed books of immersive reportage — The Last Days of Old Beijing, In Manchuria, and The Road to Sleeping Dragon — set in the country's overlooked corners, as well as many articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other outlets. (Among his favorite pieces is this Paris Review interview with the legendary literary agent Georges Borchardt.) A Fulbright scholar, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York Public Library Cullman Center, Rockefeller Bellagio and MacDowell fellow, and the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, Meyer is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches nonfiction writing and lives in the actual Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Each summer, he teaches a course that uses London as an open-air classroom.

Meyer’s next book, a biography of a remarkable last will and testament entitled Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet: The Favorite Founder’s Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity, is forthcoming from Mariner/HarperCollins in April 2022. As a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Centre for Life-Writing, he is working on a book about a scandalous trial over access to birth control in Victorian London.