Joseph Pearson (writer)

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 will be published by HarperCollins and The History Press, with a Spanish translation by Planeta in April 2022. The book tells the stories of Second World War witnesses through everyday objects they owned. [13]

His work has appeared in Newsweek,[14] The New England Review,[15][16] the BBC,[17] AGNI,[18] Monocle Magazine,[19] Prism International[20] and many other publications. His non-fiction has been translated into German, French, Arabic, Mandarin and other languages.[21]

Pearson is based in Berlin, Germany, where he is the in-house essayist of the Schaubühne Theatre[22] and the editor of The Needle,[23] one of Berlin's most popular blogs.[24] He is a founding member of the artist collective, 'AGOSTO'.[25]

In 2020, he was awarded a Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction (First Runner-up), for his story "An Iconostasis".[26] The story was nominated in 2020 for the Pushcart Prize.[27]

• Official website