Sean McMeekin Biography

Sean McMeekin

Sean McMeekin was born in Idaho, raised in Rochester NY, and educated at Stanford and UC Berkeley.  He has been fascinated by modern history ever since playing Winston Churchill in a school reenactment of the Yalta Conference at age 15, and Joseph McCarthy in an even more outlandish reenactment of the Army-McCarthy hearings at age 17, which involved camcorders and double agents in the Russian Club. He pursued this interest into various American and European battlefields, libraries, and archives, venturing as far east as Russia, before settling down to teach for some years in Turkey, where the weather is better.  Since 2014, he has taught at Bard College in the Hudson Valley.  He is the author of eight award-winning books, most recently Stalin’s War.  A New History of World War II (Basic Books, 2021).

How I Found the Agency

I was contacted by an agent following the success of The Berlin-Baghdad Express, but we did not hit it off. I found the Lownie agency through Googling literary agents/history and was immediately impressed with the design of the webpage and the emphasis on non-fiction. I also noticed that the agency represented Roger Crowley, whose works I admire. Crowley, too, found the agency online, and said that he e-mailed his proposal to Andrew Lownie and heard back the next day. I did the same, and heard back the same afternoon.