Sam Stephenson is a writer and documentarian born in Washington, North Carolina. He is the author of Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project and The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965, as well as many pieces for publications such as the New York Times, the Paris Review, Tin House, and the Oxford American. He is a former fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a two-time Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winner, and the 2012-2013 Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, where in 2013 he founded Rock Fish Stew Institute of Literature & Materials.