Early life

Born in Verviers

Verviers

Verviers is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège. The Verviers municipality includes the old communes of Ensival, Lambermont, Petit-Rechain, Stembert, and Heusy...

, Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, Sante emigrated to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in the early 1960s. He attended school in New York City, first at Regis High School

Regis High School (New York City)

Regis High School is a private Jesuit university-preparatory school for academically gifted Roman Catholic young men located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Annual class enrollment is limited to approximately 135 male students from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state area...

 in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 and then at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

Writing

Since 1984 Luc Sante has been a full-time writer. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, where he worked first in the mailroom and then as assistant to editor Barbara Epstein

Barbara Epstein

Barbara Epstein was a literary editor and a founding co-editor of the New York Review of Books.Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to a Jewish-American family, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1949.Ms...

. Sante has written on the subjects of film, art, photography, and miscellaneous cultural phenomena as well as book reviews.

His books include Low Life (1991), Evidence (1992), The Factory of Facts (1998), Walker Evans (1999), Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007), and Folk Photography (2009). He co-edited, with the writer, his former wife, Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Melissa Holbrook Pierson, born in Akron, Ohio, is a writer and essayist of non-fiction. She is a life-long motorcycle enthusiast and this is reflected in many of her books...

, O. K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors (1998), and translated and edited Félix Fénéon

Félix Fénéon

Félix Fénéon was a Parisian anarchist and art critic during the late 19th century...

's Novels in Three Lines (2007) for the New York Review Books

New York Review Books

New York Review Books is the publishing house of The New York Review of Books. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, and The New York Review Children's Collection....

 (NYRB) series.

Sante received a Whiting Writer's Award in 1989, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992-93, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997, a Grammy, for album notes, in 1998 (Sante was one of the album note writers for the 1997 re-issue of the Anthology of American Folk Music

Anthology of American Folk Music

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records , comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued from 1927 to 1932.Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the music...

), and an Infinity Award for writing from the International Center of Photography

International Center of Photography

The International Center of Photography is a photography museum, school, and research center in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...

 in 2010. He lives in Ulster County, New York

Ulster County, New York

Ulster County is a county located in the state of New York, USA. It sits in the state's Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 182,493. Recent population estimates completed by the United States Census Bureau for the 12-month period ending July 1 are at...

, and teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College

Bard College

Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...

.

External links

• "Pinakothek" Sante's "blog about pictures"
• "Who Walk In Brooklyn" interview
• Believer interview
• "Plastics" by Luc Sante
• Scan interview
• 2008 interview with Sante by Guernica Magazine
  Guernica Magazine
  Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
  
  s Suzanne Menghraj