Philipp Meyer is a highly acclaimed literary fiction author from the United States, who is best known for his award-winning novels. One of his most notable works, American Rust, was a critically acclaimed novel that won several awards and was featured on many "best of" lists in 2009.
Meyer grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore and had a non-traditional path to becoming a writer. After dropping out of high school, he worked as a bike mechanic and an orderly in a trauma center for several years before deciding to attend college. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 22, where he studied English. After graduating, Meyer worked as a derivatives trader on Wall Street to pay off his student loans, but eventually left to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time writer. However, after facing several years of failure, he had to return to Baltimore and took jobs as an EMT and construction worker to make ends meet.
In 2005, Meyer received a fellowship from the University of Texas’s Michener Center for Writers, which provided him with the financial support he needed to focus on his writing. In 2009, he published his first novel, American Rust, which was an instant success. The novel won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was an Economist Book of the Year, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Washington Post Book of the Year, among other accolades. Meyer's success as a writer has continued, and he is now recognized as one of the top writers of his generation. His second novel, The Son, has been published in fifteen languages and cemented his status as a leading voice in contemporary literature. He currently divides his time between Texas and upstate New York.