Greil Marcus

About the Author

Greil Marcus is the author of many books, including Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, and The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs. With Werner Sollors, he is the editor of A New Literary History of America. Marcus has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, the New School, and the Graduate Center in New York. In 2013 he delivered the Massey Lectures on the History of American Civilization at Harvard, in 2023 the Windham-Campbell “Why I Write” Lecture at Yale. In 2000 he was named Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française and in 2017 made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was born in San Francisco in 1945 and lives across the Bay in Oakland.