Early life
Born in
VerviersVerviers 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...
,
BelgiumBelgium , 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 StatesThe 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 SchoolRegis 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
ManhattanManhattan 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 UniversityColumbia 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 EpsteinBarbara 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 PiersonMelissa 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 FénéonFélix Fénéon was a Parisian anarchist and art critic during the late 19th century...
's Novels in Three Lines (2007) for the
New York Review BooksNew 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 MusicThe 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 PhotographyThe 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 YorkUlster 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 CollegeBard 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