Wendell Steavenson (born 1970 in New York) is an author and journalist. She received a Nieman Fellowship in 2014 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021. In 2016, her book Circling the Square was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Books, and in 2023, she was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Journalism for four articles published in The Economist.

She has written for various new outlets, including The Guardian, Financial Times, Granta, and The New Yorker, among others.[1]

Early life and education

Steavenson was born in New York in 1970 and was raised in London.[2] She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge.[3]

Career

Steavenson started her career as a correspondent for Time. In 1998, she moved to Tbilisi, Georgia, then spent two years writing about her experiences there, publishing Stories I Stole with Grove Press in 2002.[2][4]

In 2003, Steavenson moved to Iraq and wrote about the Iraq War for Slate.[2] In 2009, she published The Weight of a Mustard Seed about her experiences there.[5]

In 2015, Steavenson published Circling the Square with HarperCollins. The book documents the events of the 2011 Egyptian revolution to the June 2013 Egyptian protests which were centered around Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The book was shortlisted for the 2016 Orwell Prize for Books.[1][6]

In 2018, Steavenson published her debut novel, Paris Metro, with W. W. Norton & Company. The protagonist, Kit, is a Western journalist who like Steavenson has covered international crises in the Middle East. The November 2015 Paris attacks form the climax of the novel, with Kit at the scene of the massacre at the Bataclan theater.[7][8][9][10]

During the Russo-Ukrainian War, Steavenson reported from Ukraine for 1843.[1]

In 2023, Steavenson published Margot with W. W. Norton & Company, a coming-of-age story of a young woman with an interest in science growing up in a post–WWII American upper class environment in the 1950s and 1960s.[11]

Awards and honors

Steavenson received a Nieman Fellowship in 2014.[12] She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021.[13][1] In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism for four articles published with The Economist: "The inside story of Chernobyl during the Russian occupation", "Electric shocks, savage dogs and daily beatings: three weeks in Russia as a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war", "The barista-partisan who targeted the Russians in Kherson", and "East of Mariupol: what happened to the Ukrainians who fled to Russia?"[1]

Books

  • Stories I Stole (from Georgia). New York, NY: Grove Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8021-1737-3.
  • The Weight of a Mustard Seed. Atlantic. 2009. ISBN 9781843543053.
  • Circling the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution. HarperCollins. 2015. ISBN 9780062375278.[14]
  • Paris Metro: A Novel. W. W. Norton & Company. 2018. ISBN 9780393609790.
  • Margot. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2023. ISBN 978-1-324-02084-4.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Wendell Steavenson". The Orwell Foundation. Archived from the original on 2023-10-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  2. 1 2 3 "Steavenson, Wendell 1970-". Encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 2023-02-11. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  3. ↑ https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-summer-books-steavenson-20150531-story.html
  4. ↑ "STORIES I STOLE by Wendell Steavenson". Publishers Weekly. 2003-02-24. Archived from the original on 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  5. ↑ Worth, Robert F. (2009-05-15). "Decline and Fall". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  6. ↑ https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/06/circling-the-square-stories-from-the-egyptian-revolution-wendell-steavenson-review
  7. ↑ Doughty, Louise (2018-04-20). "A War Correspondent Comes Home, Bringing War With Her". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  8. ↑ Grey, Tobias (2018-03-08). "A War Reporter Finds Refuge by Switching to Fiction". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2023-06-28. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  9. ↑ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/wendell-steavenson/paris-metro/
  10. ↑ https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780393609783
  11. ↑ "Margot". Kirkus Reviews. 2022-10-11. Archived from the original on 2024-01-03. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  12. ↑ https://nieman.harvard.edu/alumni/class-of-2014/
  13. ↑ "Wendell Steavenson". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  14. ↑ Aspden, Rachel (2015-08-06). "Circling the Square by Wendell Steavenson review – the Egyptian revolution, up close and personal". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
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