William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His most recent book is The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. The End of Solitude: Selected Essays is forthcoming in the fall of 2022.
Bill has published more than 290 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle's 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 American Scholar, and many other publications, has been translated into 18 languages and anthologized in more than 30 college and scholastic readers.
Bill taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008. He has spoken at over 150 educational and other venues 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 Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets and A Jane Austen Education.
Bill is a member of the Board of Directors of Tivnu: Building Justice, a Jewish social-justice gap year in Portland, Oregon, and of the Advisory Council of Project Wayfinder, which runs purpose-learning programs in schools across the United States and beyond.
And, since you're wondering, it's /də-REH-zə-WITS/.
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