Philip Gourevitch

Harman Writer-In-Residence, Fall 2002

photo by Jacqueline Gourevitch

Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1997, is the Fall 2002 Sidney Harman Writer-in Residence at Baruch College. His first book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda—published in 1998—won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, the PEN/Martha Algrand Award for First Nonfiction, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award, and, in England, the Guardian First Book Award. It has been published in six foreign languages.

His second book, A Cold Case, an account of a three-decades-long investigation of a double homicide in New York City, was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

In addition to his work for The New Yorker, which has thrice been a finalist for National Magazine Awards, Gourevitch’s reportage and critical essays—Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States—have appeared in numerous publications, including Granta, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. His short fiction has been published in various journals, including Story, Southwest Review, and Zoetrope.

Gourevitch is the Chair of the International Committee of PEN American Center, and a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute. Before joining The New Yorker, he worked at the Forward newspaper, first as New York Bureau Chief, then as Cultural Editor. He was educated at Cornell University (B.A, 1986), and Columbia University’s School of the Arts (M.F.A., 1992). He is forty years old, and lives in Millerton, NY, and New York City.

BusinessWeek Online Contributing Correspondent Karin Pekarchik interviewed Philip Gourevitch about the seminar he will teach at Baruch College in the fall; follow this link for edited excerpts from their conversation. (July 2002)

Biographical Update

Philip Gourevitch covered the 2004 U.S. Presidential election for The New Yorker Magazine, to which he regularly contributes.  He was named editor of The Paris Review in 2005.

His recent publications include The Paris Review Interviews, volumes 1, 2 and 3, which he edited, and The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, originally published as Standard Operating Procedure. The book, co-written with filmmaker Errol Morris,  is a 2008 account of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison under the American occupation.

Gourevitch’s books have been translated into ten foreign languages. His contributions have appeared in numerous international newspapers, such as Granta, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, New York Times Magazine, Lettre International (Germany), Politiken (Denmark), Svedectvi (the Czech Republic), Die Woche (Germany), Corriera della Serra (Italy), and Le Monde (France). (June 2009)