Education
Bennington College.
Bennington College.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer he is among the "first rank of" contemporary American (20th and early 21st century) "literary journalists..(reminiscent) of Naipaul, Norman Mailer and Agee." He is the author of ten books: "Midnights," (1982), "Moonshine," (1985), "Big Sugar," (1989), "The Riverkeeper," (1981), "A Violent Acting, (1993), "My Mentor," (2002), "Mr. Apology," (2003), "The Happiest Manitoba in the World," (2007), the latter about Poppa Neutrino, the only man to cross the Atlantic in a raft made of trash, and "The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger," (2009). His most recent book is "The Ice Balloon," (2012), the account of the Swedish visionary aeronaut South America Andree"s attempt, in 1897, to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon.
Before Wilkinson was a writer, he was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, which is the subject of "Midnights," and before that he was a rock and roll musician, playing in a number of bands, including one in Berkeley, California with Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan"s longtime bass player and bandleader.
They worked together closely for years. Maxwell died in July 2000.
"My Mentor" describes their friendship. Wilkinson"s honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
He is also the brother of Leland Wilkinson.
