In 1996, Peter Hessler was sent by the Peace Corps to teach for two years at a small college in Fuling, a remote town on the Yangtze River. After finishing his Peace Corps service, he became a foreign correspondent, and for more than two decades he stayed in close contact with his former students. In 2019, he returned to teach again in the same region. His new book, Other Rivers, describes the sweeping changes he observed in the landscape, the city, and in the young people he taught.

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 2021. He is the author of Other Rivers; The Buried; River Town, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize; Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Country Driving; and Strange Stones. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011.

There will be a small reception to follow in STEPs Concourse!