Sven Birkerts is a distinguished essayist and critic whose works include The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again; Reading Life: Books for the Ages; The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age; Readings; and a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades: Growing up Counter in a Contrary Time. He has taught at Harvard University and Boston University, and at the Bennington Writing Seminars, and he is the editor of Agni.