- Source: Michael Meyer (travel writer)
Michael Meyer (Chinese: 梅英东), is an American travel writer and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Meyer is the author of The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground up; 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 with a BS in Education. 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.
He divides his year between London and Pittsburgh, where he is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching nonfiction writing. He is an avid long distance runner.
After a five-year clearance delay, his book The Last Days of Old Beijing was published in mainland China 2013.
Awards
2024 HOLTZBRINCK FELLOW - American Academy in Berlin
2017 Lowell Thomas Award winner for Best Travel Book
2016-17 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award
2015 Lowell Thomas Award winner for Best Travel Book
2014 Fellow, National Committee on US-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program
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
2005 Lowell Thomas Award winner for excellence in travel writing
Works
"The Last Days of Old Beijing". National Geographic Intelligent Traveler. May 13, 2009. Archived from the original on June 7, 2010.
= 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)
The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up. Bloomsbury. 2017. ISBN 978-1-6328-69357.
References
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