Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture." In 2006 he published a revised edition with new introduction and afterword, reflecting on the endurance of reading.
Birkerts was born in Pontiac, Michigan and grew up in the metropolitan Detroit area. He graduated from Cranbrook School and from the University of Michigan in 1973.
Having published several books of collected essays on literature, Birkerts is Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the editor of AGNI, the literary journal. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and Mount Holyoke College.
He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife Lynn. He has two children, Mara and Liam.
His father was noted architect Gunnar Birkerts, who based his practice in the Detroit area after immigrating to the United States following completion of his architectural degree in Stuttgart. He was born and grew up in Latvia, leaving as a young man before the Soviet Army occupied the nation in the last days of World War II.Works
