Steve Luxenberg
Steve Luxenberg, a Washington Post associate editor, is an award-winning author and journalist. During 30+ years with The Post, he has overseen reporting that has earned numerous honors, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Twitter: @sluxenberg.
Reviews have praised the book's deep research and storytelling. “Absorbing," wrote James Goodman in The New York Times Book Review, "so many surprises, absurdities and ironies. . . . Segregation is not one story but many. Luxenberg has written his with energy, elegance and a heart aching for a world without it.”
Early praise for Separate came from Katherine Boo, bestselling author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity ("deeply moving, devastatingly relevant"); Walter Isaacson, bestselling biographer of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci ("Every paragraph resonates in today's headlines"); and Bob Woodward, author of Fear: Trump in the White House and other bestsellers ("a brilliant milestone in understanding the history of race relations in America").
Steve's first book was the critically-acclaimed Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret (Hyperion/Hachette, 2009), chosen as a Michigan Notable Book and selected as the 2013-2014 Great Michigan Read. During that year, Annie’s Ghosts was the focus of a state-wide series of events and discussions. The Washington Post named it one of its "Best Books of 2009," and it was featured on NPR's All Things Considered.
A native of Detroit, Steve lives in Baltimore with his wife, Mary Jo Kirschman.
“Stories rarely begin at the beginning, but every storyteller has to begin somewhere, and Anna chooses to start this story with shame.”
“But what do I believe?”
“Secrets, I've discovered, have a way of working free of their keepers.”
“Without really trying, I have become a collector of other families' secrets. Whenever I tell someone about my detective work, the first question is invariably something like this: 'Can you tell me the secret?' Sure, I say. The next question often is: 'Want to hear my family's secret?”