Discipline: Literature – nonfiction

Jeff Sharlet

Discipline: Literature – nonfiction
Region: VERMONT
MacDowell Fellowships: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2019, 2021

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, and the Outspoken Award. In April 2014 Yale University Press will publish Sharlet’s next book, an anthology titled Radiant Truths. Sharlet’s greatest distinction is Ann Coulter’s designation of him as one of the stupidest journalists in America.

Sharlet is Mellon Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth, the college’s first tenure-track 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.

Studios

Watson

Jeff Sharlet worked in the Watson studio.

Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…

Learn more