Joseph Mitchell

Bio

Journalist, writer. Born near Fairmont, North Carolina. He was educated at the University of North Carolina, but went to Durham for a reporting job before attaining his degree. In 1929, a feature he wrote about a tobacco auction caught the attention of a New York editor. Mitchell moved to New York City and worked as a reporter and feature writer for the “Morning World,” the “Herald Tribune,” and the “World-Telegram.” In 1938, he went to “The New Yorker” as a feature writer and spent the next fifty-eight years there, writing “Talk of the Town” and profiles of the cities denizens. He kept an office at the magazine until his death at 87. Mitchell’s first book, “My Ears Are Bent,” published in 1938, is a collection of his best newspaper stories. His book “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon” has been called New York’s Dubliners. Other collections of his work are “Old Mr. Flood,” “The Bottom of the Harbor” and “Joe Gould’s Secret,” and he also collaborated with EDMUND WILSON on “Apologies to the Iroquois.” He received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1965. In 1992, most of his “New Yorker” pieces were collected in a single volume titled “Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories.”