Brice Particelli
Photo by Jon Lemon
Bio
Brice Particelli teaches writing at the University of California (Berkeley). He earned his PhD in education from Columbia University, where he was the director of a literacy-focused nonprofit. Particelli has been a Steinbeck Fellow in Nonfiction at San José State, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Nonfiction at the New York Foundation for the Arts, and his work has recently been published in Harper’s Magazine, Guernica, Salmagundi, and the Smart Set, as well as in peer-reviewed academic journals. He has edited two anthologies of short fiction, America Street (Revised Edition, Persea Books, 2019) and In the Between (Persea Books, 2022), and he is currently writing a narrative nonfiction book exploring educational (dis)information communities in the U.S., titled Delegitimation Nation: America’s flourishing (mis)education movements.
A few years ago, I began writing a series of essays to investigate how misinformation is used to empower cultural movements. Fresh out of a PhD in education, I focused on the quirkier sides of the story—visiting communities that claim that the Earth is younger than wine, or that it’s as flat as a pancake. But as I investigated these insular communities, they continued to grow.
As pocket-sized search engines became ubiquitous, our digital worlds have expanded. Once insular communities are turning into full educational ecosystems—often with printing presses, talk shows, museums, and even multi-billion-dollar universities. Misinformation has become part of our cultural story and there seems to be no end in sight. I wanted to dig deeper.
With the support of this fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, I will be working on a creative nonfiction book on the subject, tentatively titled Delegitimation Nation: America’s flourishing (mis)education movements. The NEA’s support will allow sustained time to write and research, as well as the powerful confirmation that comes with recognition. These are incredibly meaningful gifts, and I can’t thank them and the panelists enough.