23 Facts About Philipp Meyer

Philipp Meyer was born on May 3,1974 and is an American fiction writer, and is the author of the novels American Rust and The Son, as well as short stories published in The New Yorker and other places.

Philipp Meyer won the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize.

Philipp Meyer won the 2014 Lucien Barriere prize in France and the 2015 Prix Litterature-Monde Prize in France.

Philipp Meyer grew up in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland.

Philipp Meyer attended the Baltimore City Public Schools system, including Baltimore City College High School, until dropping out at age 16 and getting a GED.

Philipp Meyer spent the next five years working as a bicycle mechanic and occasionally volunteering at Baltimore's Shock Trauma Center.

At age 19, while taking college classes in Baltimore, Philipp Meyer decided to become a writer.

Philipp Meyer decided to leave his hometown and at 21, after several attempts at applying to elite colleges, was admitted to Cornell University.

Philipp Meyer graduated from Cornell with a degree in English and many years later received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas.

Philipp Meyer worked as a first responder for about fifteen years, mostly on a part-time basis.

Philipp Meyer was one of the first outside EMTs to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans, driving his own vehicle there and arriving on the day of the storm.

Philipp Meyer describes his experience there as "soul-crushing" but maintained friendships with many of his old colleagues.

Philipp Meyer wrote a second novel that he could not get published, a book he has called "an apprentice-level work".

Philipp Meyer moved back into his parents' house in Baltimore, taking jobs driving an ambulance and as a construction worker.

Philipp Meyer was preparing for a long-term career as a paramedic when, in 2005, he received a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, where he wrote the majority of American Rust.

In 2010, Philipp Meyer was named to The New Yorkers "20 under 40", its decennial list of 20 promising writers under the age of 40.

Philipp Meyer developed The Son as a television show and co-founded a production company.

Toward the end of composing American Rust, Philipp Meyer sought to find another subject through which he could explore what he felt was the "creation myth of America".

Philipp Meyer saw the potential for a novel concerning the Bandit Wars and the "creation myth of Texas" to explore broader historical issues about the development of America as a whole.

Philipp Meyer has estimated that he read 350 or so books about the history of Texas and diverse topics from captivity narratives to guides on bird tracks in the course of his composition of the novel.

Philipp Meyer has said that he has conceived The Son to be the second part of a trilogy of novels that began with American Rust.

Philipp Meyer has described The City as his longest and most ambitious book, which had taken nearly ten years to write.

Philipp Meyer intended The City to be a modern take on Dante's Divine Comedy, with elements of magical realism, dystopian fiction, and science fiction.