Miriam Berkley and photo display at the Sewanee Writers Conference

Miriam Berkley is an author photographer with affordable rates who works quickly and has photographed over 1000 writers. Her author portraits in color and black and white date from the late '80s. She shoots digitally and has the ability to scan and send non-digital images from her archive as well as to create illustrations from her photographs. Photo stock list updated frequently,

Areas of specialty include writers from Latin America, Spain and Portugal, African-American and African writers, and Scandinavian, especially Swedish, authors. Other special strengths are science fiction and mystery writers.

Author portraits or other photography assignments for jacket, publicity or other editorial use by publishers and publications; can cover a story or event using a combination of images and words.

Photographs have been bought or commissioned by authors, trade and textbook publishers, magazines, newspapers, films and television programs, convention displays, web sites, etc. worldwide. Photographs of Ian McEwan, Stephen Hawking, Doris Lessing, William Gaddis, Donald Barthelme, Andrew Hudgins have served as front cover art.

Other images: photos of New York, Paris, London, Mexico, Sweden, Sewanee (TN), as well as of dramatic scenic and other imagery suitable for jacket art. New York photo archive is recent but fairly extensive; some photographs can be seen on Miriam Berkley's main album on Facebook, and can be viewed by any Facebook member.

Publishing, non-photographic background: Da Capo Press, Editor; Dover Publications, Publicity Director; Marion Boyars, New York Office Manager.

Before turning to photography full-time in 1989, Miriam Berkley wrote book reviews, author interviews, publisher profiles and photography articles and reviews for such publications as Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Popular Photography, and American Photographer, which also published my full-page-plus photograph of Andreas Feininger.

Recipient of an NEH grant for journalists, a 1984 Merit Award from the Art Directors Club (1984) for text to the story "Volcano," in Popular Photography , and won a Scholarship in Non-Fiction to the 1984 Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Web Pages with additional images:
NAPP page: View my gallery

Among the writers whose photos are below are (top l. to r., then row below l. to r., etc.): Anthony Powell, Astrid Lindgren, Susanna Clark, Gay Talese, Stephen Hawking, Neil Gaiman, Chimananda Ngozi Adichie, Luisa Valenzuela, Elizabeth Strout, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Derek Walcott, Aryn Kyle, Barbara D'Amato, Ruth Rendell, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Arundhati Roy, Ha Jin, Mavis Gallant, Anton Arrufat, Octavia Butler, Barry Hannah, Orhan Pamuk, J.M.Coetzee, Hubert Selby, Tillie Olsen, José Saramago, Charles Frazier, Norman Mailer, Rubem Fonseca, Neil Jordan, Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Zoe Jenny, Kathy Acker, Jakob Arjouni, Grace Paley, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Boyden, etc.

In the United States publisher sales include FSG, Alfred A Knopf, Vintage Books, Little Brown, Harcourt, Akashic Books, Pearson Education, Glencoe McGraw Hill and Gale Research. Outside the US: Diogenes, Circulo de Lectores, Bloomsbury, Rowohlt, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Bertelsmann, Bonniers, Norstedts, Fayard, Mondadori, Alfaguara, Meulenhoff, Nieuw Amsterdam, Companhia das Letras, etc.

Also: the BBC, NBC and other television and film use.

Publications include: The New York Times Book Review; Dagens Nyheter (Sweden); Der Spiegel; Le Monde; The Bookseller; Livres Hebdo; Publishers Weekly; Time Magazine; People; Entertainment Weekly.

Exhibition of New York City photographs at the Sewanee Writers Conference, Summers 2010, 2011, 2012, Sewanee, TN.

Among my newest author jacket and PR photographs: Steve Yarbrough and Pamela Erens. Michael W. Hudson, Emma Donoghue, Ellen Meeropol, Gillian Flynn, Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly. Newest US jacket and publicity photos licensed: Michael Connelly (Little, Brown), Harlan Coben (Dutton), Yunte Huang (W.W.Norton), Ellen Meeropol (Red Hen), Summer Wood (Bloomsbury), Tom Young (Putnam). Other photos on books currently out of Jeff Parker (Dzanc), Aryn Kyle (Simon & Shuster), and Katie Crouch (Little Brown).

New photos of Rabih Alameddine, Jane Smiley, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Moussa Ag Assarid, Spencer Wells, José Emilio Pacheco, Alex Espinoza, Dagoberto Gilb, C.M. Mayo, Jerry Stahl, Kwei Quartey, Michael Tolkin, Arturo Vallejo, Deborah Tannen, Nicholson Baker, Eavan Boland, Aryn Kyle, Maaza Mengiste, Irina Reyn, Steve Yarbrough, Laura van den Berg, Katie Crouch, Skip Horack, Josh Weil, Peter Christian Hall, Gay Talese. Recently photographed writers include Jorge F. Hernandez, João Luis Peixoto, Yuri Andrujovich, Fabrizio Mejia Madrid, Eduardo Halfón, Pedro Mairal, Fatou Diome, Umberto Eco, A.B. Yehoshua, Etgar Keret, Elias Khouri, Francisco Goldman, Ma Jian, John Banville, Kevin Baker, Calvin Baker, Elizabeth Strout, Samantha Hunt, Charles Bock, John Burnham Schwartz, Ron Hansen, Rubem Fonseca, Martín Solares, Juan Carlos Botero, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Alfredo Molano Bravo, Denise Mina, Allan Guthrie, Kurt Andersen, Lionel Shriver, Dinaw Mengestu, Vikram Chandra, Stephen Dixon, Anne Frydman, Matt Haig, Andrea Semple and Michael O'Connor. I photographed Orhan Pamuk in Sweden a few weeks before he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize. Mark Slouka, Aryn Kyle and George Pendle are among early 2007 authors whose books bear images by me. My color photo of a crouching David Mitchell is on the jacket of Black Swan Green and has been published in many magazines and newspapers. My photograph of Susanna Clarke covers the back jacket of the originating UK edition of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and I have to date licensed use of the image to publishers of the Dutch, Finnish, Brazilian, Spanish and Italian editions of the book.

A very widely-used photograph was my image of Stephen W. Hawking that was shot after jacket art was complete but sent out, in cropped form, with review copies for the original edition of A Brief History of Time. One or another of my images of Dr. Hawking was seen throughout the world. Photos of Aryn Kyle, James Wood, David Mitchell, Elizabeth Strout and, most recently, Maaza Mengiste, are among other photographs that have also been very widely published.

Exhibitions of author photos: Frankfurt Book Fair; The University of Guadalajara; Havana; annually during the summer at the Sewanee Writers Conference (where I am resident Portrait Photographer); 50 images of Southern Writers on permanent display at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Spring 2007-present: participation in four juried group shows in NYC of non-author photos, and a photograph of Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo by invitation of the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea for their late 2007 show, "Mask" (this photograph was mentioned in the NY Times review of the show). In 2007 two photographs, "Frances Patridge at 92," and "Long Island City" on my member portfolio page on the NAPP website were chosen as the "Editor's Choice."

Awarded a 2008 grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to mount an exhibition of Hell's Kitchen photographs (show ran July 7- August 25, 2008 at the Columbus branch of the New York Public Library (show extended to September 6).

February 2009: Four photographs in the juried show, "Manhattan Neighborhoods," in the Gallery of the Manhattan Borough President.

May 4-June 29, 2009, Solo exhibition, "New York City Zoom: Photographs From Five Boroughs," in the Gallery of Manhattan Borough President
Scott Stringer. Show originally scheduled to run through June 2, 2009 but extended through June 29, 2009.

Three photos of boxers at Gleason's Gym art show during the 2009 Under the Bridge Art Festival.

Photo exhibition, "New York Now, in the lobby of the theatre New World Stages at 343 West 49th Street. Show from 4/21/10-June 20/10. Reception May 13, 2010, 5:30-7:30 PM, All welcome.

Languages spoken: French, Spanish, Swedish (some).

Skills: Photoshop and Illustrator. Attended Photoshop World 2007 in Boston in early April and will attend Photoshop World, Boston, 2009. Ability to work with studio lighting but prefer to and usually shoot outdoors using available light.

An interview with Miriam Berkley ran in the July- September 2008 issue of the Malaysian book magazine, Quill, and was reprinted for the special edition of the magazine for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia, in Fall 2008. The interview appeared in longer form on the
blog, "Eric Forbes Good Books Guide."

Written about by Henry Kisor, writer and former Chicago Sun-Times book editor, on his news blog: http://henrykisor.blogspot.com/2008/06/miriam-berkley-literary-photographer.html

Article, "Miriam Berkley: A Literary Eye," in the December 2009 online edition of the photography magazine at http://www.rangefindermag.com/storage/articles/RF1209_Berkley_Brownstein.pdf>

Audio interview by Scott Shepard for Rangefinder Magazine, available as ITunes free podcast or at http://media.libsyn.com/media/insidemedianetworks/rfr091221.mp3.

Photo exhibition, "New York Now," April 21-June 20, 2010, in the lobby of the theatre, New World Stages, 343 West 49 Street. Artist's reception: May 13, 2010, 5:30-7:30.

Caution: I am the only one who may license my images. None of the photographs on this page, which represent a tiny fraction of my stock, may be downloaded, copied or used in any way without my permission.

Memberships: ASMP, APA, Editorial Photographers (EP), Professonal Women Photographers (PWP), Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), the Authors Guild, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), Friend of P.E.N.