Michael Meyer (travel writer)

Michael Meyer  (梅英东), is an American travel writer and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Meyer is the author of The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground up; In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China; and The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. He graduated from University of Wisconsin–Madison with a BS in Education. He first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. Following Peace Corps, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied writing under Adam Hochschild and Maxine Hong Kingston.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Reader’s Digest, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, and on This American Life.

In China, he has represented the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, training China’s UNESCO World Heritage Site managers in preservation practices.

He divides his year between London and Pittsburgh, where he is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching nonfiction writing. He is an avid long distance runner.

After a five-year clearance delay, his book The Last Days of Old Beijing was published in mainland China 2013.

Awards

 * 2024 HOLTZBRINCK FELLOW - American Academy in Berlin
 * 2017 Lowell Thomas Award winner for Best Travel Book
 * 2016-17 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award
 * 2015 Lowell Thomas Award winner for Best Travel Book
 * 2014 Fellow, National Committee on US-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program
 * 2011 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency
 * 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 2010 Fellow, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library
 * 2009 Whiting Award
 * 2005 Lowell Thomas Award winner for excellence in travel writing

Books

 * (book interview)
 * (book interview and book talk)