Phillip Lopate

Early life

He was born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents, Fran Beslow and Albert Lopate; his father was an aspiring writer whose mother tongue was Yiddish. His parents ran a candy store together and had a tumultuous marriage, and he was raised in relative poverty in tenements in Williamsburg. As a teenager, he joined the local Orthodox Jewish choir and had considered studying to become a cantor.

He graduated with a BA degree from Columbia University in 1964, where he edited The Columbia Review, the nation's oldest college literary magazine. He received his doctorate from Union Institute & University in 1979. Lopate is the younger brother of radio host Leonard Lopate.

Career

Teaching

Lopate worked as a writer-in-the-schools for twelve years and his memoir Being With Children came out of his association with the artists-in-the-school organization Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Lopate coordinated T&W's first project (at Manhattan's P.S. 75), the model for which led to similar programs in all 50 states.

He has taught creative writing and literature to undergraduate and graduate students at several institutions, including Bennington College, Fordham University, Cooper Union, the University of Houston, New York University (NYU), Columbia University School of the Arts, and The New School. He is currently professor of Writing at Columbia University. He held the Adams Chair at Hofstra University until 2011, where he was professor of English. He retired from Columbia University in 2023.

Creative writing

Lopate's essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in several Pushcart Prize annuals, the anthologies Congregation and Testimony, and The Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Harvard Educational Review, The New York Times Book Review, Boulevard, The Journal of Contemporary Fiction, Double Take, and Creative Nonfiction, among others.

Travel

Lopate has written for the New York Times Sophisticated Traveler, Conde Nast Traveler, European Travel and Life, Sidestreets of the World, and American Way.

Architecture

Lopate has written about architecture and urbanism for Metropolis, The New York Times, Double Take, Preservation, Cite, and 7 Days, where he wrote a bimonthly architectural column. He has served as a committee member for the Municipal Art Society and as a consultant for Ric Burns' PBS documentary on the history of New York City.

Media critic

He has written about movies for The New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Cinemabook, Threepenny Review, Tikkun, American Film, The Normal School, and the anthology The Movie That Changed My Life, among others. A volume of his selected movie criticism,* Totally Tenderly Tragically*, was published by Doubleday-Anchor in 1998. He edited a massive anthology of American film criticism from the silent era to present day, entitled American Movie Critics: From Silents Until Now, was published in March 2006 for Library of America.

Personal life

He has been married twice. In 1964, he married Carol Bergman, before divorcing in 1970.

In 1991, he married his second wife Cheryl Cipriani, with whom he has a daughter. The couple raised their daughter in the Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, a Conservative congregation.

Awards and fellowships

Lopate has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He also received a Christopher Medal for Being With Children, the Texas Institute of Letters award for best non-fiction book of the year (for Bachelorhood), and was a finalist for the Spielvogel-Diamonstein PEN Award for best essay book of the year (for Portrait of My Body). His anthology Writing New York received an honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society's Brendan Gill Award, and a citation from the New York Society Library. He was also a Lila Wallace Foundation writer-in-residence. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Jessie Shohfi, [https://arts.columbia.edu/news/professor-phillip-lopate-inducted-american-academy-arts-and-letters "Professor Phillip Lopate Is Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters"], arts.columbia.edu. March 8, 2023. Accessed August 12, 2025.

Bibliography

Essays, Memoir, Non-fiction:

• *Being With Children *(Doubleday, 1975)
• Bachelorhood (Little, Brown, 1981)
• Against Joie de Vivre (Simon & Schuster, 1989)
• Portrait of My Body (Doubleday-Anchor, 1996)
• Totally Tenderly Tragically (Anchor, 1998)
• Getting Personal (Basic Books, 2003)
• Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan (Anchor, 2004);
• Notes on Sontag (Princeton University Press, 2009)
• Portrait Inside My Head (Free Press, 2013)
• To Show and to Tell (Free Press, 2013)
• A Mother's Tale (Mad River Books, 2017)
• A Year and a Day (New York Review Books, 2023)
• My Affair with Art House Cinema: Essays and Reviews (Columbia University Press, 2024)

Fiction:

• Confessions of Summer (Doubleday, 1979)
• The Rug Merchant (Viking, 1987)
• Two Marriages (Other Press, 2008)

Poetry:

• The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (Sun Press, 1972)
• The Daily Round (Sun Press, 1976)
• At the End of the Day (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010)

Anthologies (as contributor):

• The Best American Short Stories (1974)
• The Best American Essays (1987)

Anthologies (as editor):

• The Art of the Personal Essay (Doubleday-Anchor, 1994)
• Writing New York (The Library of America, 1998)
• Journal of a Living Experiment (Teachers & Writers Press, 1979)
• The Anchor Essay Annual (Anchor, 1997-9)
• The Phillip Lopate Reader (Basic Books, 2003)
• American Movie Critics (Library of America, 2006)
• The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm (New York Review Books, 2015)
• The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (Pantheon, 2020)
• The Golden Age of the American Essay (Anchor, 2021)
• The Contemporary American Essay (Anchor, 2021)

References

References

1. Lopate, Philip [https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/the-story-of-my-father-2/ The Story of My Father] Creative non-fiction. Retrieved on 9 August 2025
2. Silverman, Andrew (7 August 2025) [https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/761074/fran-philip-leonard-lopate-levys-rye-joseph-colombo-alka-seltzer/ How a Jewish mother from Flatbush became America’s most recognizable Italian on TV] ''The Forward''. Retrieved on 8 August 2025
3. (2025-08-06). "Leonard Lopate, Longtime New York Radio Host, Dies at 84". [[New York Times]].
4. Shapiro, Susan (2 June 2023). [https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/dark-angel-nonfiction-phillip-lopate-retirement-columbia The Dark Angel of Nonfiction] ''Tablet''. Retrieved on 9 August 2025
5. [http://people.hofstra.edu/phillip_lopate/ "Phillip Lopate"] {{Webarchive. link. (January 29, 2009 . [[Hofstra University]]. Retrieved September 16, 2014.)
6. "My Brother, My Life (with apologies to Pasternak)".
7. Hechinger, Fred M. "About Education: An Experiment in 'Activism,'" ''The New York Times'' (December 4, 1979).
8. [http://www.hofstra.edu/News/Ur/HUPN/hupn_0506_accomplishments.cfm "Accomplishments,"] ''Hofstra Pride''. Accessed February 8, 2011.
9. (22 May 2021). [https://ohiocenterforthebook.org/2021/05/22/ascher-carol/ Carol Ascher] Ohio Center for the Book. Retrieved on 9 August 2025
10. Lopate, Philip (1998). [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lopate-totally.html Totally, Tenderly, Tragically] ''The New York Times''. Retrieved on 9 August 2025
11. Ascher, Carol. “On Becoming Carol Ascher.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 1989, pp. 32–35. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3346439. Accessed 9 Aug. 2025.
12. Lopate, Philip (September 2023). [https://harpers.org/archive/2023/09/the-love-of-my-wife/ The Love of My Wife] ''Harper's Magazine''. Retrieved on 9 August 2025
13. "Phillip Lopate".
14. (29 September 2003). "Review of ''Getting Personal'' by Phillip Lopate".
15. (October 1, 2003). "GETTING PERSONAL". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
16. (9 February 2004). "Review of ''Waterfront'' by Phillip Lopate".
17. (15 December 2013). "Review of ''Waterfront'' by Phillip Lopate".
18. (December 1, 2012). "PORTRAIT INSIDE MY HEAD". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
19. (November 15, 2012). "TO SHOW AND TO TELL". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
20. "Book Review: A Mother's Tale by Phillip Lopate". [[The Los Angeles Review]].
21. (July 1, 2008). "TWO MARRIAGES". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
22. (March 15, 2015). "THE PRINCE OF MINOR WRITERS". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
23. (November 25, 2020). "'The Glorious American Essay,' From Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace". [[The New York Times]].
24. (September 15, 2020). "THE GLORIOUS AMERICAN ESSAY". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
25. (February 15, 2021). "THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE AMERICAN ESSAY". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
26. (June 15, 2021). "THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ESSAY". [[Kirkus Reviews]].