Jeff Sharlet

Jeff Sharlet is the nationally bestselling author of THE FAMILY (2008), described by Barbara Ehrenreich as “one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read.” His most recent book is SWEET HEAVEN WHEN I DIE (2011). “This book belongs in the tradition of long-form, narrative nonfiction best exemplified by Joan Didion, John McPhee [and] Norman Mailer,” declares The Washington Post. “Sharlet deserves a place alongside such masters.” Excerpts from Sharlet’s 2010 book, C STREET received the Molly Ivins Prize, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Outspoken Award, and the first and second place features prizes from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. In 2015 an article for GQ by Sharlet, “Inside the Iron Closet,” received the National Magazine Award for Reporting. His greatest distinction remains Ann Coulter’s designation of him as one of the stupidest journalists in America.

Sharlet is associate professor of English at Dartmouth, the college’s first tenured professor of creative nonfiction, and a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He began writing in 1990 at Hampshire College as a student of Michael Lesy, author of Wisconsin Death Trip, and continued at the San Diego Reader, as editor of Pakn Treger, the world’s only English-language glossy magazine about Yiddish culture, and as a senior humanities writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2000, Sharlet teamed up with novelist Peter Manseau to create KillingTheBuddha.com, which has since become an award-winning online literary magazine about religion and culture.