Alec Wilkinson (born 1952) is a writer who has been on the staff of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'' since 1980. According to ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Penns ...

'' he is among the "first rank of" contemporary American (20th and early 21st century) "literary journalists...(reminiscent) of

Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...

and Agee".

Career

Wilkinson is the author of ten books. His most recent book is ''The Ice Balloon'' (2012), the 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. He is also the author of "Sister Sorry," a play based on "The Confession," a story of his that appeared in

in 1993. “Sister Sorry” had its premiere at

Barrington Stage Company Barrington Stage Company (BSC) is a regional theatre company in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. It was co-founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, and former Managing Director Susan Sperber in Sheffield, Massachusetts. I ...

in Pittsfield, Massachusetts during their 2021 season. Before Wilkinson was a writer, he spent a year as a policeman in

Wellfleet, Massachusetts Wellfleet is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, and is located halfway between the "tip" and "elbow" of Cape Cod. The town had a population of 3,566 at the 2020 census, which swells nearly sixfold during the summer. A t ...

, on

Cape Cod Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer mon ...

, which is the subject of ''Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police,'' 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 Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

's longtime bass player and bandleader. 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''. 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 New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. He is the brother of computer scientist

Leland Wilkinson Leland Wilkinson (November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an American statistician and computer scientist at H2O.ai and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed the SYSTAT statistical ...

Awards

Wilkinson's honors include a Lyndhurst Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He received a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1987.

Publications

*''Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police.'' New York: Random House, 1982. *''Moonshine: a Life in Pursuit of White Liquor.'' New York: Knopf, 1985. . *''Big Sugar'' (1989). *''The Riverkeeper'' (1992). *''A Violent Act'' (1993). *''My Mentor'' (2002). *''Mr. Apology and other essays'' (2003). *''The Happiest Man in the World'' (2007). *''The protest singer : an Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger.'' New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. *''The Ice Balloon'' (2012). *''A Divine Language'' (2022).

References

External links

Alec Wilkinson's contributor profile on The New Yorker
1952 births Living people Bennington College alumni The New Yorker people The New Yorker staff writers 20th-century American journalists American male journalists Hackley School alumni {{US-journalist-1950s-stub