William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. He has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and many other publications, has been translated into 18 languages and anthologized in 39 college and scholastic readers.

Deresiewicz taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer. He has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges as well as at the University of San Diego. His previous books are The Death of the Artist, A Jane Austen Education, and Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets.