Best-selling author, essayist William Deresiewicz speaks April 4

Best-selling author, essayist and literary critic William Deresiewicz will speak on the Furman University campus Wednesday, April 4 at 5 p.m. in Watkins Room of the Trone Student Center.

His CLP talk, “College and the Inner Life,” is free and open to the public, and is presented as part of Furman’s 2018 Tocqueville Series, “Love, Friendship and Politics.”

Author of “Excellent Sheep” presents “College and the Inner Life” April 4.

Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent college speaker, and best-selling author of “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.”

He taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Scholar, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Deresiewicz has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award. He is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee.

His work has been translated into at least 15 languages and anthologized in more than 30 college readers. He has spoken at over 60 colleges, high schools and educational groups and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges.

His previous book is titled “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter” (2011, Penguin Press).  Deresiewicz is currently working on a book about the transformation of the arts and arts careers in the new economy.

Deresiewicz received his B.A. in biology and psychology (1985), his master’s in journalism (1987), and Ph.D. in English (1998) from Columbia University.

For more information, contact Paige Blankenship in the Furman Department of Politics and International Affairs, 864-294-3547, or visit: www.furman.edu/tocquevilleprogram.