Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed.” He first came to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps, and for several years worked as a freelance journalist, contributing to The New York Times, Time, the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and several other outlets. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. He studied journalism at the University of California-Berkeley. His next book, “In Manchuria: Life on a rice farm in China’s northeast,” will be published in late 2012.