Public Biography
Martin Kessler is the senior obituary writer for The New York Time5, where he has written notices of the dead since 2011. He is widely regarded within the paper as its finest prose stylist, a reputation that mildly irritates the features desk.
Mr. Kessler holds a Bachelor of Arts in classics from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and a Master of Arts in English from the University of Virginia. He spent six years as a general assignment reporter for the Baltimore Sun before requesting a transfer to the obituary desk, a move his editors initially interpreted as a cry for help but which Mr. Kessler described as “the only logical career trajectory for someone who takes writing seriously.”
He has won two ASNE awards for deadline writing, both for obituaries that were described by the judges as “unexpectedly moving” and by Mr. Kessler as “exactly as moving as intended.” His obituaries are known for their structural precision, their attention to the minor details of a life, and their tendency to find in every death a quiet commentary on how the living have arranged things.
Mr. Kessler lives alone in Baltimore, where he commutes to the New York office twice a week. He has said he prefers Baltimore because “it has the appropriate disposition.”
Selected Obituaries
- A 2,400-word notice for the inventor of the retractable badge lanyard
- The obituary of a crossing guard who worked the same intersection for forty-one years
- A notice for a competitive eater who died of causes unrelated to competitive eating, which Mr. Kessler noted in the second paragraph “as a matter of journalistic responsibility”