Occupation Writer TV shows Twenty Questions Parents Harry McPhee | Role Writer Name John McPhee | |
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Full Name John Angus McPhee Spouse(s) Yolanda Whitman (2nd wife) Children Martha McPhee, Laura McPhee, Jenny McPhee, Sarah McPhee Books Annals of the Former World, Coming into the Country, The Control of Nature, Encounters with the Archdruid, The Pine Barrens Similar People | ||
Re assembling california a conversation with john mcphee
John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American writer, widely considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008 he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career."
Contents
- Re assembling california a conversation with john mcphee
- John mcphee with peter hessler 10 november 2010
- Background
- Writing career
- Teaching
- Awards and honors
- References
Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
John mcphee with peter hessler 10 november 2010
Background
McPhee has lived in Princeton, New Jersey, for most of his life. He was born in Princeton, the son of the Princeton University athletic department's physician, Dr. Harry McPhee. He was educated at Princeton High School, then spent a postgraduate year at Deerfield Academy, before graduating from Princeton University in 1953, and spending a year at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.
While at Princeton, McPhee went to New York once or twice a week to appear as the juvenile panelist on the radio and television quiz program Twenty Questions. One of his roommates at Princeton was 1951 Heisman Trophy winner Dick Kazmaier.
Twice married, McPhee is the father of four daughters: the novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, photographer Laura McPhee, and architecture historian Sarah McPhee.
Writing career
McPhee's writing career began at Time magazine and led to a long association with The New Yorker weekly magazine beginning in 1963 and continuing to the present. Many of his twenty-nine books include material originally written for that magazine.
Unlike Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, who helped kick-start the "new journalism" in the 1960s, McPhee produced a gentler, more literary style of journalism that more thoroughly incorporated techniques from fiction. McPhee avoided the streams of consciousness of Wolfe and Thompson, but detailed description of characters and appetite for details make his writing lively and personal, even when it focuses on obscure or difficult topics. He is highly regarded by fellow writers for the quality, quantity, and diversity of his literary output.
McPhee's subjects, reflecting his personal interests, are highly eclectic. He has written pieces on lifting body development (The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed), the psyche and experience of a nuclear engineer (The Curve of Binding Energy), the United States Merchant Marine (Looking for a Ship), farmers' markets (Giving Good Weight), freight transportation (Uncommon Carriers), the shifting flow of the Mississippi River (The Control of Nature), geology (in several books), as well as a short book entirely on the subject of oranges. One of his most widely read books, Coming into the Country, is about the Alaskan wilderness.
McPhee has profiled a number of famous people, including conservationist David Brower in Encounters with the Archdruid and the young Bill Bradley, whom McPhee followed closely during Bradley's four-year basketball career at Princeton University.
Teaching
McPhee is also a renowned nonfiction writing instructor at Princeton University, having taught generations of aspiring undergraduate writers. McPhee still teaches his writing seminar two years out of every three, most recently during the spring 2016 semester.
Many of McPhee's students have achieved distinction for their writing:
Awards and honors
McPhee has received many literary honors, including the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, awarded for Annals of the Former World. In 1978 McPhee received a Litt.D. from Bates College, in 2009 he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and in 2012 he received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Amherst College.