Less than a decade after his first book, River Town, was published, Peter Hessler's name has become shorthand for honest, insightful commentary on the charms and contradictions of contemporary China. (If the word "Hessleresque" hasn't yet been defined, consider it now done.)
Having served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sichuan, a clipper at the Wall Street Journal, and the China correspondent for the New Yorker (he drew on for his work for both publications in his second book, Oracle Bones), Hessler and his wife (Factory Girls author Leslie Chang) now live in Colorado, where he does as much running as he does writing.