Michael Lesy

Who is Michael Lesy?

Michael Lesy is a writer and professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His books, which combine historical photographs with his own writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip, Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life, Visible Light, Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties, and Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century with Lisa Stoffer.

Lesy grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio and studied at Columbia University, The University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University, where he attained a doctorate in American cultural history. He has taught at Hampshire College since 1990 and is professor of literary journalism. In 2006 he was named a United States Artists Fellow.

Wisconsin Death Trip was adapted into a film by James Marsh in 1999.

Lesy is also a professor in the Five Colleges community of Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

He was awarded a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography Studies.