Lawrence Weschler

His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998). His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998); Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006); and Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative (2011). Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, The Threepenny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar émigré composer. From 2013 to 2014, Weschler contributed “Pillow of Air,” a monthly column in The Believer dedicated to “Amble through the worlds of the visual.” In October 2021, in collaboration with editor and cartoonist David Stanford, Weschler launched the newsletter Wondercabinet, described as a "Fortnightly Compendium of the Miscellaneous Diverse", taking up many of the same themes as his earlier column.

Lawrence Weschler studied at University of California, Santa Cruz. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with New York University. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, George Polk Award, National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and The Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism.

• Name — Lawrence Weschler • Imagesize — 275px • Birthplace — Van Nuys, California • Occupation — Writer • Nationality — American • Period — 1981–present • Genre — Creative nonfiction

• "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment" The New Yorker 60/49 (January 21, 1985): 21–22. Talk piece on disarmament. • "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment" The New Yorker 60/52 (February 11, 1985): 27–28. Talk piece on Polish political situation. * • "The Paralyzed Cyclops: Mediating a Vivid, Decades-Long Argument between Two Giants of Contemporary Art" The Believer 6/9 [58] (November/December 2008): 23–25. Robert Irwin & David Hockney. • A Rare Personal Look at Oliver Sacks's Early Career (2015)