Alec Wilkinson
{{Short description|American journalist}}
{{Use mdy dates |date=December 2021}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Alec Wilkinson
| image =
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| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1952|3|29}}
| birth_place = Mount Kisco, New York
| death_date =
| death_place =
| nationality =
| other_names =
| occupation = writer
| employer = The New Yorker
| years_active =
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| spouse =
| children = 1
| relatives = Leland Wilkinson (brother)
Amie Wilkinson (niece)
| awards = Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
}}
Alec Wilkinson (born March 29, 1952){{cite book |title=Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors |date=2011 |publisher=Gale |isbn=9780787639952 |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000106274/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=c4584461 |access-date=30 January 2023 |format=Collection |chapter=Alec Wilkinson }} is an American writer who has been on the staff of The New Yorker since 1980.{{cite magazine |title=Alec Wilkinson |url=https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/alec-wilkinson |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=2021-12-14}} According to The Philadelphia Inquirer he is among the "first rank of" contemporary American (20th and early 21st century) "literary journalists...(reminiscent) of Naipaul, Norman Mailer and Agee"."The Bitter Lot of Sugar Cane Workers," Phillip Gourevitch, Sunday, October 1, 1989, p. 123.
Career
Wilkinson is the author of eleven books. His most recent book is A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age.Alec Wilkinson, A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Before that, he published The Ice Balloon in 2012, an account of the Swedish visionary aeronaut S.A. Andree's attempt, in 1897, to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon.{{Cite web | last = Hellman | first = David | title = Adventurer with a Maverick Streak | publisher = SF Gate.com | date = March 18, 2007 | url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/RVGA7OH2UO1.DTL#ixzz11232Dz00 | accessdate = Sep 30, 2010}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/2012/01/21/145413433/lesson-learned-dont-fly-to-north-pole-in-a-balloon|title=Lesson Learned: Don't Fly To North Pole In A Balloon|work=NPR.org|access-date=2018-04-16|language=en}} He is also the author of "Sister Sorry," a play based on "The Confession," {{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/10/04/the-confession-3|title=The Confession|magazine=The New Yorker |date=27 September 1993}} a story of his that appeared in The New Yorker in 1993. “Sister Sorry” had its premiere at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts during their 2021 season.{{Cite web|url=https://barringtonstageco.org/Season-Shows/sister-sorry/|title = Sister Sorry}}
Before Wilkinson was a writer, he spent a year as a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, which is the subject of Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police,{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fVkvAQAAIAAJ|title=Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police|last=Wilkinson|first=Alec|date=1982|publisher=Ruminator Books|isbn=9781886913325|language=en}} and before that he was a rock and roll musician, playing in a number of bands, including one in Berkeley, California with Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan's longtime bass player and bandleader.{{Citation needed|date=April 2018}}
Wilkinson began writing when he was 24, showing work to William Maxwell, his father's friend, who in addition to being a novelist and short-story writer, had for forty years been an editor of fiction at The New Yorker.{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/01/arts/william-maxwell-91-author-and-legendary-editor-dies.html |title=William Maxwell, 91, Author and Legendary Editor, Dies |newspaper=New York Times |date=2000-08-01 |last=Hampton |first=Wilborn |access-date=2021-12-14}} They worked together closely for years. Maxwell died in July 2000. My Mentor describes their friendship.
Personal life
Wilkinson is married, has a son, and lives in New York City. He is the brother of computer scientist Leland Wilkinson.
Awards
Wilkinson's honors include a Lyndhurst Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1987.{{Cite web |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/alec-wilkinson/ |title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Alec Wilkinson |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |access-date=2021-12-14}}
Publications
=Books=
- Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police. New York: Random House, 1982.
- Moonshine: a Life in Pursuit of White Liquor. New York: Knopf, 1985. {{ISBN|0394545877}}.
- Big Sugar (1989).
- The Riverkeeper (1992). {{ISBN|0679741348}}
- A Violent Act (1993). {{ISBN|0679749829}}
- My Mentor (2002). {{ISBN|0618382690}}
- Mr. Apology and other essays (2003). {{ISBN|0618123113}}
- The Happiest Man in the World (2007). {{ISBN|1407013114}}
- The protest singer : an Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. {{ISBN|0307272370}}
- The Ice Balloon (2012). {{ISBN|000746004X}}
- A Divine Language (2022). {{ISBN|1250168570}}
=Articles=
- "Illuminating the Brain's 'Utter Darkness'" (review of Benjamin Ehrlich, The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023, 447 pp.; and Timothy J. Jorgensen, Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life, Princeton University Press, 2021, 436 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXX, no. 2 (February 9, 2023), pp. 32, 34–35.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/alec-wilkinson Alec Wilkinson's contributor profile on The New Yorker]
- [http://worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/51983501?page=frame&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.loc.gov%2Fcatdir%2Fsamples%2Fhm051%2F2003047837.html&title=&linktype=digitalObject&detail= Sample text from Mr. Apology and Other Essays by Alec Wilkinson.]{{dead link|date=April 2018}}
{{Authority control}}
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Category:Bennington College alumni
Category:The New Yorker people
Category:The New Yorker staff writers
Category:20th-century American journalists