Jon Krakauer author page

Jon Krakauer biography

Jon Krakauer is an American author and journalist whose nonfiction is widely read by older teens and adults in schools and colleges. After graduating from Hampshire College in 1976, he worked in a range of jobs before moving into full-time writing.

His early collection Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (1990) gathered reportage on climbing and alpinism. Krakauer’s breakthrough book, Into the Wild (1996), expanded his 1993 article about Christopher McCandless and has been used on secondary and post-16 reading lists; it was adapted for cinema in 2007 in a film written and directed by Sean Penn.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1997) charted the events of the 1996 Everest season and became a major bestseller. Further titles include Under the Banner of Heaven (2003), an inquiry into religious extremism; Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009); the investigative e-book and later paperback Three Cups of Deceit (2011); and Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (2015).

Several works have reached new audiences through adaptation. Into the Wild was released as a feature film in 2007, and Under the Banner of Heaven was adapted as a seven-part limited series for FX on Hulu in 2022.

Into Thin Air was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.