Author Peter Hessler

“I never would have expected that I’d learn Chinese and live in China.  But in fact the seeds of my career were sown quite early [at the Language Villages],” says Hessler, who studied English literature at both Princeton and Oxford.

After spending a year living in Sweden with his family, he returned home eager to find opportunities to continue practicing Swedish. He found the Language Villages and spent two weeks as a villager at Sjölunden in the summer of 1979.   He remembers it as a place that allowed him to reconnect with the year he’d spent in Sweden, a year that, he says, includes his favorite childhood memories.  “I liked learning another language and I liked the adventure of living in a foreign country.”

For the last 15 years, Hessler has lived and worked in China as a freelance writer for The New Yorker and National Geographic Magazine.  He has received numerous awards and much professional recognition for his work, which has been featured in several Best Travel Writing anthologies and has been nominated for national awards.  His book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, was named a finalist in the non-fiction category for the National Book Foundation’s National Book Awards.

Hessler remembers that Swedish came back to him quickly while he was at the Villages.  “As it turned out, the language I studied was not the language I used in my career.  But it was the process and desire that mattered.  You can never predict exactly how a child will respond to his or her education, but you can be certain that the most engaging experiences will be remembered.”

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