Outstanding Alumni
Tom Bissell (B.A., 1996)
Former Peace Corps volunteer and book editor for Henry Holt and W.W. Norton, Tom Bissell (B.A., 1996) has established himself as a prominent travel writer.
Bissell—who served as coeditor of the Red Cedar Review while at MSU—is now a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. A native of Escanaba, Michigan, he is also the author of books Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and, more recently, The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Pantheon Books, 2007). In 2006, Bissell was awarded the Rome Fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
