Jonathan Malesic

Jonathan Malesic found himself miserable in his dream job as a tenured college professor. He had burned out. Nothing seemd to help: not medication, not therapy, not even a semester of unpaid leave. Finally, he quit. To make sense of his experience, he dove into research about burnout and connected it to his expertise in religion, ethics, and philosophy. The result is his latest book, The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. Now, he is an essayist, journalist, and scholar whose writing has been recognized as notable in Best American Essays (2019, 2020, 2021) and Best American Food Writing (2020) and has received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology (2019). His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Washington Post, Vox, The Guardian, America, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, The Hedgehog Review, The Point, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. He has been the recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisville Institute. He has appeared on Anderson Cooper Full Circle, NPR's All Things Considered, The Happiness Lab, and numerous other podcasts and radio shows. His first book, Secret Faith in the Public Square, won a ForeWord INDIES gold medal for the religion category (2009). His latest book, The End of Burnout, was published by University of California Press in January 2022. He lives in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Sarah Wall.)