Peter Hessler

Peter will lead the workshop, Education in China: A Twenty-Year Perspective.

February 2-February 6, 2026

Registration will open in the spring 2026 semester 

In 1996, Peter Hessler was sent by the Peace Corps to China, where he taught English language and literature to college students in Fuling, a small city on the Yangtze River. That experience became  the subject of his first book, River Town (2001). After finishing his two years in the Peace Corps, Hessler moved to Beijing, where he eventually became the New Yorker’s China correspondent. With Oracle Bones (2006) and Country Driving (2010), he completed a trilogy of nonfiction books about China, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. In 2006, Oracle Bones was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Hessler also won a National Magazine Award and an Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting on a factory town in southeastern China.

     In 2011, Hessler moved with his family to Cairo, where he covered the events of the Egyptian Arab Spring for the New Yorker. His book about this period in Egypt, The Buried (2019), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, Hessler returned to China, teaching at Sichuan University during the pandemic. His most recent book, Other Rivers (2024), is about his time in Sichuan.

     Hessler grew up in Columbia, Missouri, where he attended Hickman High School, the local public school. After graduating from Princeton University, Hessler studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. Hessler is married to the writer Leslie T. Chang, and they currently live with their twin daughters in Ridgway, Colorado.