Suzannah Lessard

Suzannah Lessard
Born	Suzannah Terry Lessard (1944-12-01) December 1, 1944 Islip, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Genre	Non-fiction
Notable awards	Whiting Award (1995)
Parents	John Ayres Lessard Alida Mary White
Relatives	Stanford White (great-grandfather)

Suzannah Terry Lessard (born December 1, 1944) is an American writer of literary nonfiction. She has written a memoir, reportorial pieces, essays, and opinion pieces.

Life

Lessard was born in Islip, New York to John Ayres Lessard and Alida Mary (White). She is the great-granddaughter of architect Stanford White. She has taught at Columbia School of the Arts, Wesleyan University, The New School, George Mason University, George Washington University, and Goucher College MFA in Creative Non-fiction.

She was one of the first editors of the Washington Monthly from 1971 to 1974. From 1975 to 1995 she was a staff writer at The New Yorker. She has also published in The New York Times Magazine, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, The Wilson Quarterly and Harvard Design Magazine.

Awards and honors

• 1995 Whiting Award
• 2003 Mark Lynton History Prize, Mapping the New World: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Sprawl

Fellowships

• 2001-2002 Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C.
• 2002-2003 Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship for creative non-fiction, at George Washington University

Works

She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family (1996).

Her next book, The View From a Small Mountain: Reading the American Landscape, was published in 2017.

In 2019, Lessard published The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape, which Michael Kimmelman described as "thoughtful, exquisitely written collection of interconnected essays."

External links

• "Suzannah Lessard and Honor Moore", BOMB 57, Betsy Sussler, Fall 1996
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation