The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, Bill Hayes is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the author of seven books: Sweat—A History of Exercise; How We Live Now; How New York Breaks Your Heart; The Anatomist—A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy; Sleep Demons—An Insomniac’s Memoir; Five Quarts; and Insomniac City—New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, BuzzFeed, and The Guardian.
Hayes is an established photographer, with credits including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times. His portraits of his partner, the late Oliver Sacks, appear in the volume of Dr. Sacks’s suite of final essays, Gratitude. His book Insomniac City—New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me is now being made into a film by Brouhaha Entertainment (for which he wrote the screenplay).
Hayes has lectured at NYU, UCSF, and University of Virginia, and has appeared at the Sydney Writers Festival, the 92nd Street Y, and other venues. He served as the Creative Director of the Oliver Sacks Foundation and as a co-editor of Dr. Sacks’s posthumously published work (Gratitude and The River of Consciousness).
