Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Born December 14, 1957[1]
Akron, Ohio
Occupation Writer
Nationality USA
Education A.B. Vassar College 1980
M.A. Columbia University 1984[1]
Notable works The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles

Melissa Holbrook Pierson (born December 14, 1957)[1] is a writer and essayist of non-fiction.

Pierson was born in Akron, Ohio. She is a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast and this is reflected in many of her books. Her works are often explorations of personal experience, extended into general social commentary and history.

When asked in an interview, "Do you consider yourself a travel writer, a kind of “place writer,” a nature writer, or—" Pierson answered, "All of those things. I don’t think of myself as fitting into a category. But I had to be careful in all of my books not to repeat things, because I have these ideas, and though the subjects were disparate, the same idea would come up through different portals. "[2] The Place You Love is Gone was described by Anthony Swofford in The New York Times Book Review as, "the punk rock girl sitting in the rear pews at church, offering a counternarrative: what she says about the patriarchy and the raping of the land (and the Indians and dairy farmers and denizens of small towns in upstate New York) is true but the priests (elected politicians and water managers and ambitious city planners) wish her parents would drag the girl home; the organ player pipes louder in order to drown the punk's anti-establishment rant."[3]

Works

Books

Essays

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Melissa Holbrook Pierson." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 3 June 2011.
  2. Brake (2008)
  3. Swofford (2006)

References

External links