Joseph Pearson | |
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Born | Edmonton, Canada |
Nationality | Canadian / Italian |
Joseph Sanders Pearson (born 1975 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian essayist, cultural historian, and journalist.
Between 1997 and 2001, Pearson received his doctorate in Modern History at the University of Cambridge.[1] [2] Pearson has taught in the humanities at Columbia University,[3] New York University,[4] the Berlin University of the Arts,[5] and the Barenboim–Said Academy, a peace project headed by conductor Daniel Barenboim.[6] He is the nephew of children's novelist Kit Pearson.[7]
His history and portrait of the German capital, Berlin, was published by Reaktion Press[8] and University of Chicago Press[9] in 2017. The Independent called Berlin "the last word in explaining not only Berlin’s incredible history, but also its present day cultural situation"[10] and Bloomberg reported that the book "masterfully offers a close reading of the metropolis in all its brutal immediacy".[11] The book was also positively reviewed in The German Studies Review.[12]
Pearson's new book My Grandfather's Knife was published by HarperCollins and The History Press in April 2022, with a Spanish translation by Planeta in October 2022. The book tells the stories of Second World War witnesses through everyday objects they owned.[13] The Spectator reported the book "sheds intriguing new light" on the period’s history,[14] while the book received positive reviews in the Literary Review of Canada[15] and elsewhere, with Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed, calling the book, "literary non-fiction at its best".[16] A chapter from the book, regarding Nazi plunder of string instruments obtained by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, appeared in German in the literary review Lettre International.[17]
Pearson's work has appeared in Newsweek,[18] The New England Review,[19][20] the BBC,[21] AGNI,[22] Monocle Magazine,[23] Prism International[24] and many other publications. His non-fiction has been translated into German, French, Arabic, Mandarin and other languages.[25]
Pearson is based in Berlin, Germany, where he is the in-house essayist of the Schaubühne Theatre[26] and the editor of The Needle,[27] one of Berlin's most popular blogs.[28] He is a founding member of the artist collective, 'AGOSTO'.[29]
In 2020, he was awarded a Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction (First Runner-up), for his story "An Iconostasis".[30] The story was nominated in 2020 for the Pushcart Prize.[31]