William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His most recent book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. His current project is a historically informed memoir about being Jewish.
Bill has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The London Review of Books, and many other publications, has been translated into 19 languages and included in over 40 college readers and other anthologies.
Bill taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer. He has appeared on The Colbert Report, Here & Now, The New Yorker Radio Hour, and many other outlets and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges as well as at the University of San Diego. His previous books are The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech, A Jane Austen Education, and Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets.
Bill is a member of the board (directorial, editorial, or advisory) of The Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life, a retreat and study program in Catskill, NY; Tivnu: Building Justice, which runs a Jewish service-learning gap year and other programs in Portland, OR; Circle, a group coaching and purpose-finding program for college and graduate students; Clio’s, a selectively curated, chronologically organized bookstore in Oakland; and The Metropolitan Review, a new literary journal.
And, since you’re wondering, it’s /də-REH-zə-WITS/.