Michael Dirda a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post.

Career

Having studied at Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 for his undergraduate degree, Dirda took a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 in comparative literature

Comparative literature

Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the Washington Post; in 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 for his criticism. Currently, he writes for the "Book World" section of the Post.

Works

Two collections of Dirda's literary journalism have been published: Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-253-33824-7) and Bound to Please (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005; ISBN 0-393-05757-7). He has also written Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2005; ISBN 0-8050-7877-0), Classics for Pleasure (Orlando: Harcourt, 2007; ISBN 0-151-01251-2), On Conan Doyle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011; ISBN 0-691-15135-0), and the autobiographical An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003; ISBN 0-393-05756-9).

Family

Dirda lives in Silver Spring, Maryland

Silver Spring, Maryland

Silver Spring is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It had a population of 71,452 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth most populous place in Maryland, after Baltimore, Columbia, and Germantown.The urbanized, oldest, and...

, with his wife, Marian, and their cat. They have three sons: Christopher (b. 1984), Michael (b. 1987), and Nathaniel (b. 1990).

External links

• Book World
• Michael Dirda "Style" section archive at The Washington Post
• Michael Dirda book review archive at The Washington Post
• Michael Dirda archive from The New York Review of Books
  The New York Review of Books
  The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
  
  
• "Catalog Reading", by Sam Sacks. Review of Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure