Meyer wins Whiting award for 'Last Days’

Michael Meyer has lived in China and now lives in Manhattan, but he finds that you never outgrow a Minnesota upbringing, especially when someone compliments you on your work.

"You have that immediate reaction of, 'Did I earn this? Do I deserve this? Here, let me show you something else,'" Meyer said in the wake of learning about getting a 2009 Whiting Writers' Award, which comes with prestige, but also $50,000. Awarded Wednesday night in New York City, the award recognizes 10 young writers based on their accomplishments and promise. Given annually since 1985, it's one of the most coveted prizes for up-and-coming writers.

Meyer, 37, who grew up in Plymouth, earned the honor for his 2008 book "The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed" (Walker & Co., $26). The book chronicled the two four-year stints that he spent in China, once with the Peace Corps and later as a volunteer teaching English in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. While there, he ending up documenting the razing of ancient neighborhoods as China redeveloped its urban areas.

Author Adam Hochschild called the book a "stunning, compassionate feat of reporting." The New York Times said it was "an impressive feat." That "feats" is the word that comes to mind is no simple coincidence: Meyer lived in two unheated rooms, relying on a public latrine a well-timed 6-minute walk away.

Still, he can't wait to return.

And he will -- on Sunday, when he and his wife, whom he met in China, move to her family's ancestral farm in Manchuria to observe a year in the cycle of the rice harvest. "My job will be to be make rice interesting," Meyer deadpanned.

For the past year, he and his wife, a lawyer, have lived in New York City. He spent his days at the New York Public Library, "where there are more resources about China than I could have found in China."

"She's had enough of midtown Manhattan, and so have I," he said. The break will be clean: In Manchuria, they'll sleep in a room warmed by corn husks smoldering beneath the bed. Still, he can't wait to go back.

Meyer said the countryside near the border of northern Korea is reminiscent of Minnesota, with corn and soybean fields. "I'll be looking for connections between farms there and in Minnesota," he said. "The grain trade is such that markets that used to be thousands of miles apart are much more connected now." He'll also trace his wife's family history, which, like that of many Midwestern farmers, is one of younger generations moving away.

Of the Whiting award, he said, "I'm humbled by it. It's rarely given to nonfiction writers like me, who are not quite journalists, not quite academics and not memoirists." His next book, "In Manchuria," is due to be published in 2012.

The Meyerses had other good news this month: His wife was admitted to the Minnesota bar; they intend eventually to relocate to Minnesota.

He hopes that his prize money will enable him to teach creative nonfiction someday, having found that his choice of going into the Peace Corps instead of pursuing a master's degree isn't what most universities prefer on a budding professor's résumé. "But I have no regrets, you know. One thing should always lead to the next thing, and hopefully this leads to something else."

Kim Ode • 612-673-7185