Ian Frazier books

Anthologies

Collections

Non-Fiction

Standalone Novels

Ian Frazier is an American writer who has spent decades at The New Yorker, where his essays, humor pieces, and reported features have made him one of the magazine’s most recognizable voices. His non-fiction books combine travel writing, American history, and a deadpan comic sensibility that is entirely his own.

Great Plains (1989) is probably his most widely read book, a road-trip account through the American heartland that mixes historical research with personal encounters. Travels in Siberia (2010) applied the same approach to Russia, following Frazier on multiple trips across the world’s largest country. His humor collections, including Coyote v. Acme and Lamentations of the Father, gather his comic essays and fictional pieces. More recently, Paradise Bronx (2024) and The Snakes That Ate Florida (2026) continue his tradition of finding strange, interesting stories in American places that other writers overlook.