Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier (born 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American writer and humorist. He wrote the 1989 non-fiction history Great Plains, 2010's non-fiction travelogue Travels in Siberia, and works as a writer and humorist for The New Yorker.

Frazier grew up in Hudson, Ohio. His father, David Frazier, was a chemist, who worked for Sohio; his mother, Peggy, was a teacher, as well as an amateur actor and director, who performed in and directed plays in local Ohio theaters.He graduated from Western Reserve Academy in 1969 and from Harvard University in 1973.

The New York Times critic James Gorman described Frazier's 1996 humor collection Coyote v. Acme (in the title piece, Wile E. Coyote is suing the manufacturer of various rocket-propelled devices) as the occasion for "irrepressible laughter in the reader." Gorman rates Frazier's first collection, 1986's Dating Your Mom, as "one of the best collections of humor ever published."

• 1989 Whiting Award
• 1997 Thurber Prize for American Humor, for essay collection Coyote vs. Acme
• 2009 Thurber Prize for American Humor, for essay collection Lamentations of the Father