Sven Birkerts

Who is Sven Birkerts?

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."

Birkerts was born in Pontiac, Michigan. He graduated from Cranbrook School and then from the University of Michigan in 1973.

Birkerts is Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the editor of AGNI, the literary journal. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and Mount Holyoke College.

He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife Lynn. He has two children, Mara and Liam.

His father is noted architect Gunnar Birkerts.