Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Tribune. He has represented the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the American Academy of Berlin. His next book, In Manchuria: Life on a Rice Farm in China’s Northeast, will be published in 2013 and was excerpted on This American Life this spring. He teaches English at the University of Pittsburgh and literary journalism at Hong Kong University. He is also an exultant new dad.