Discipline: Literature – nonfiction

Evan Friss

Discipline: Literature – nonfiction
Region: Harrisonburg, VA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2022

Evan Friss is a writer and history professor at James Madison University. He's the author of On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City, and The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s. He was also the guest curator of “Cycling in the City,” an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. His research has been profiled in The New Yorker, Slate, National Geographic, The Economist, The New York Times, and other media outlets.

At MacDowell in 2022, he worked on his book, a history of the American bookstore. The book will be published by Viking.

Studios

MacDowell

Evan Friss worked in the MacDowell studio.

Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…

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