William Finnegan

William Finnegan

William Finnegan was born in 1952 and is currently 74 years old. William Finnegan was born in New York City, NY, USA. Finnegan attended the University of California, Santa Cruz where he received a literature degree.

William Finnegan is a staff writer and journalist who works for The New Yorker, spanning waves, continents, conflict, and cultures.

He usually writes about political conflict and racial injustice in Southern Africa following and during apartheid. Finnegan also reports on struggles in Mexico and Latin America, in addition to inner city neighborhoods in the US, as he focuses on how poverty, policy, and privilege affect lives.

As a youth, William Finnegan began to surf, and this would become a passion for the rest of his life. Following his college education, he traveled in Africa, Australia, and Asia, even as he survived working odd jobs and taking freelance travel writing jobs.

When he landed in South Africa’s Cape Town, he got a job at a coloured school known as Grassy Park High School, where he worked as an English teacher. His experiences as a teacher at a time when there was a national boycott would be chronicled in his first work.

William Finnegan makes his home in New York, where he reports for The New Yorker and spends his free time surfing in the sea.
In his first work, Crossing the Line, William Finnegan tells of the time he spent teaching in Cape Town at the Grassy Park High School.

It was a school set aside for coloured students in the Apartheid era. Finnegan then lived across the line of segregation and saw firsthand how the rules of discrimination shaped daily life in homes, classrooms, and beyond.

He shows how cruel and unfair the system can be as students learn under oppression, carry heavy burdens, and are denied equal resources. Through the stories of young people, families, and teachers, he pulls no punches as he brings the harsh reality of apartheid to light.

A dozen years later, William Finnegan published the work Cold New World, all about his travels across the United States, chronicling the lives of four teenagers living in poverty-stricken communities.

He shares stories of how they deal with loss, poverty, gang life, drugs, and racism. Finnegan shows how they often feel stuck with no opportunity to exchange their lives.

Nonetheless, he writes about how he tried to show the youths that anything was possible, even as he shows readers how social and economic barriers result in devastating consequences.

In his 2015 work Barbarian Days, William Finnegan writes a memoir in which he tells of his love for surfing, which has become a lifelong passion.

Growing up in Hawaii and California, he was very young when he started participating in the sport and traveled across the globe looking for the perfect spots to surf. Along the way, he explored identity, culture, risk, and friendship as he shows how surfing became both his education and escape.

Through stories of discovery, beauty, and danger, he shows how surfing for those passionate about it can become a philosophy, an art form, and more than just a sport.

William Finnegan: Lists & Other Mentions

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life:
  1. President Obama: Summer Reading List Selection in 2016.
  2. Los Angeles Times: The 30 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Last 30 Years Selection in 2025.
  3. GQ: The 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism Selection in 2021.
  4. New York Times: The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years Selection in 2019.

Related Authors

Fans of William Finnegan also enjoy these authors:

1. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter Series.
2. Robert Galbraith, author of the Cormoran Strike Series.
3. John Le Carre, author of the George Smiley Series.
4. Anthony Doerr, author of: All the Light We Cannot See.
5. John Irving, author of: A Prayer for Owen Meany.

William Finnegan: F.A.Q