Melissa Holbrook Pierson (born December 14, 1957)
["Melissa Holbrook Pierson." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: ]Gale
A gale is a strong wind; the word is typically used as a descriptor in nautical contexts. The U.S. National Weather Service defines a gale as sustained surface winds moving at a speed of between 34 and 47 knots (, or ).[Akron, Ohio
Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city pro ...]
. She attended Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely followi ...
, receiving her BA in English Literature in 1980. Her MA, also in English Literature, was awarded in 1984 by Columbia University. She is a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast and this is reflected in many of her books. Her works are often explorations of personal experience, extended into general social commentary and history. She is a longtime book, film, and photography critic, and reviewed film on video for ''Entertainment Weekly'', 1990 - 1999.
When asked in an interview, "Do you consider yourself a travel writer, a kind of 'place writer', a nature writer, or—" Pierson answered, "All of those things. I don't think of myself as fitting into a category. But I had to be careful in all of my books not to repeat things, because I have these ideas, and though the subjects were disparate, the same idea would come up through different portals."[Brake (2008)]
''The Place You Love is Gone'' was described by Anthony Swofford
Anthony Swofford (born August 12, 1970) is an American writer and former U.S. Marine, best known for his 2003 book '' Jarhead'', based heavily on his accounts of various situations encountered in the Persian Gulf War. This memoir was the basis o ...
in ''The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'' as "the punk rock girl sitting in the rear pews at church, offering a counter narrative: what she says about the patriarchy and the raping of the land (and the Indians and dairy farmers and denizens of small towns in upstate New York) is true but the priests (elected politicians and water managers and ambitious city planners) wish her parents would drag the girl home; the organ player pipes louder in order to drown the punk's anti-establishment rant."[Swofford (2006)]
Selected works
Books
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Essays
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Memory City
, published i
Place
(2020 - 2021)
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Air and Ice, 1994
, published in Tin House
''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...
(May 9, 2018)
"Losing Home
, published in Orion Magazine
* “Guided by the Stars", published i
Moto Guzzi: 100 Years
ed. Jeffrey Schnapp (Rizzoli, 2021)
* “My Fifteen Minutes", published in Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit (Crown, 2007), “Bark” Editors
* “Whippets", published in Taking Things Seriously (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), eds. Joshua Glenn & Carol Hayes
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* “The Hunted", published in All the Available Light (Simon & Schuster, 2002), ed. Yona Zeldis McDonough
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* “To the Edge: Motorcycles and Danger", published in The Art of the Motorcycle (Guggenheim Museum, 1998)
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References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierson, Melissa Holbrook
1957 births
Living people
Motorcycling writers
American female equestrians
American atheists
Vassar College alumni
Columbia University alumni