Van Nuys, California
Van Nuys ( ) is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Van Nuys City Hall, Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley ...
) is an American author of works of
creative nonfiction
Creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, literary journalism or verfabula) is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts ...
.
A graduate of Cowell College of the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...
(1974), Weschler was for over twenty years (1981–2002) a staff writer at ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the
George Polk Award
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...
s—for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992—and was also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award (1998).
His books of political reportage include ''The Passion of Poland'' (1984); ''A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers'' (1990); and ''Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas'' (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises ''Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin'' (1982); ''
David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...
’s Cameraworks'' (1984); '' Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder'' (1995); ''A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces'' (1998); ''Boggs: A Comedy of Values'' (1999); ''Robert Irwin: Getty Garden'' (2002); ''Vermeer in Bosnia'' (2004); ''Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences'' (February 2006); and ''Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative'' (2011). ''Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder'' was shortlisted for both the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
Bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's a ...
Sarah Lawrence
Sarah (born Sarai) is a Patriarchs (Bible)#Matriarchs, biblical matriarch, prophet, and major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character simil ...
New York Institute for the Humanities
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995
* "New" (Daya song), 2017
* "New" (No Doubt song), 1 ...
at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001–2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, ''Omnivore''. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with
Bill T. Jones
William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952), is an American Choreography, choreographer, director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The company's home in Manhattan. J ...
and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to '' McSweeney’s'', ''
The Threepenny Review
''The Threepenny Review'' is an American literary magazine founded in 1980. It is published in Berkeley, California, by founding editor Wendy Lesser. Maintaining a quarterly schedule (March, June, September, December), it offers fiction, memoirs ...
Ernst Toch
Ernst Toch (; 7 December 1887 – 1 October 1964) was an Austrian composer of European classical music and film scores, who from 1933 worked as an émigré in Paris, London and New York. He sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches t ...
Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar émigré composer.
From 2013 to 2014, Weschler contributed “Pillow of Air,” a monthly column in '' The Believer'' dedicated to “Amble through the worlds of the visual.” In October 2021, in collaboration with editor and cartoonist David Stanford, Weschler launched the newsletter Wondercabinet, described as a "Fortnightly Compendium of the Miscellaneous Diverse", taking up many of the same themes as his earlier column.
Bibliography
Books
*
*''Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin'' (1982)
*''The Passion of Poland: From Solidarity through the State of War'' (1984)
*''A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers'' (1990)
*''Shapinsky’s Karma, Boggs’s Bills, and Other True-life Tales'' (1990)
*'' Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder'' (1995)
*''A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces'' (1998)
*''Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas'' (1998)
*'' Boggs: A Comedy of Values'' (1999)
*''Vermeer in Bosnia'' (2004)
*''Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences'' (2006)
*''True To Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney'' (2008)
*''Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin (Expanded Edition)'' (2008)
*''Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative'' (2011)
*''Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez'' (2016)
*''Waves Passing in the Night'' (2017)
*''And How Are'' You'', Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurology, neurologist, Natural history, naturalist, historian of science, and writer.
Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford ...
'' (2019)
Essays and reporting
* "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment" ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' 60/49 (January 21, 1985): 21–22. Talk piece on disarmament.
* "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment" ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' 60/52 (February 11, 1985): 27–28. Talk piece on Polish political situation.
*
* "The Paralyzed Cyclops: Mediating a Vivid, Decades-Long Argument between Two Giants of Contemporary Art" '' The Believer'' 6/9 8(November/December 2008): 23–25. Robert Irwin & David Hockney. A Rare Personal Look at Oliver Sacks's Early Career (2015)