Author Description

Bruce Jackson’s Ephemera finishes his recent triplicate of essay collections. This one, which starts with an almost breezy account of his own near heart-attack, feels as undeniable as his Places and Changing Tense. Jackson is a wonderful conversational writer. Even when he’s polemicizing against torture-mongers, Bush-men, Buffalo’s goodies, or bad Sontag, he doesn’t bring a hammer to the debate (though he’s glad to shiv a Dershowitz). Jackson’s writing always conveys his happy warrior’s appetite for life. This guy’s got eyes and ears and stories for the Ages. He also once had a great dog! Read all about it… —Benj DeMott, editor, First of the Month Bruce Jackson is a writer, folklorist, documentary filmmaker and photographer. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is author or editor of more than 40 books, the most recent of which are Ways of the Hand: A Photographer’s Memoir (2022), Changing Tense: Thirty memento mori (2021), and Places: Things heard, things seen (2019). Two of his early works have recently been dramatized by New York’s Wooster Group. In collaboration with SUNY Distinguished Professor Diane Christian, he has directed and produced five documentary films, three books, and, since spring 2000, curated the Buffalo Film Seminars. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was nominated for a Grammy Award, and was named an Associate Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. The French government appointed him Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite in 2012.