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ChatChat - Claudia Cragg


Jul 25, 2017

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks with Peter Hessler about his piece in the 24th July edition of The New Yorker "How Trump is Transforming Rural America". The main focus of this piece is Grand Junction, Colorado. 

Peter Hessler joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2000. From 2000 until 2007, he was the magazine’s correspondent in China.

His Letter from China articles included features on the basketball player Yao Ming, a Shenzhen factory worker, and a rural family in the grip of a medical crisis.

His first book, “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze,” won the Kiriyama Prize and was short-listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

His second book, “Oracle Bones,” was a finalist for the National Book Award.

He won an American Society of Magazine Editors award for his piece “China’s Instant Cities,” about the entrepreneurial frenzy behind China’s dramatic economic growth, published in National Geographic.

He completed his trilogy of China books with “Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip.” In 2011, Hessler was named a MacArthur Fellow.

After leaving China, Hessler moved to southwestern Colorado, where his stories included a feature about the local uranium industry and a profile of a small-town druggist.

His collection of essays, “Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West,” was published by Harper in 2013. 

In the fall of 2011, Hessler moved to Cairo, Egypt, where he has covered the ongoing revolution.