Pete Hamill Named Writer in Residence at NYU

shonna.keogan@nyu.edu

Veteran NYC Reporter and Writer Will Teach in the Department of Journalism Starting Fall 2004

Faculty of Arts and Science Dean Richard Foley today announced that Pete Hamill, award-winning journalist and writer, has been appointed Writer in Residence with the Department of Journalism at New York University. As of the 2004-2005 academic year, Hamill will teach master's-level journalism classes during both the fall and spring semesters, as well as participate in various University programs.

"It is with great excitement that we welcome Pete Hamill into the NYU fold," Dean Foley said. "A journalist's journalist and one of the true voices of New York, Hamill will be a wonderful addition to an already distinguished faculty. We have no doubt our students will benefit greatly from his insight and wisdom, honed from an extraordinary professional career spanning over 40 years." Writer, newspaperman and consummate New Yorker, Pete Hamill has been a major force at many of New York's most influential print news outlets. He started his career at the New York Post in 1960, where he became a columnist in 1965 and later served as editor-in-chief during a particularly tumultuous time in that paper's history. In addition to the Post, he has worked as a columnist for Newsday, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News, where he also served as editor in the mid-1990s.

Hamill's magazine experience includes over 25 years as a contributing editor at New York Times Magazine, where he covered the wars in Vietnam, Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Nicaragua. In addition, Hamill wrote on various domestic topics, including social unrest in the 1960s and urban decay. He has written for many major magazines, including the New Yorker, Esquire (where he was a columnist for two years), New York, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast Traveler, and others. In addition to his journalistic accomplishments, Hamill has published eight novels and two collections of stories, and written a number of screenplays, most recently a film biography of the Mexican revolutionary leader, Pancho Villa, for Edward James Olmos. A Drinking Life, his bestselling memoir, was published in 1994 and spent 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935, of Irish immigrant parents. He served in the U.S. Navy, attended Mexico City College, the Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. He splits his time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

06/08/04