an American's Reflections - Stephen Lapeyrouse’s website

Stephen Ludger Lapeyrouse (born December 10, 1952) is an author, essayist, journalist, English-language community forum host in Moscow, Russia.

Stephen Lapeyrouse was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky; grew up in Mobile, Alabama. Graduated University Military School in 1971; graduated New College, University of Alabama in 1977 with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies: Religion and Philosophy; he received an MA in 1981 with Antioch College’s Individualized Master of Arts Degree Program (residing in Germany and Switzerland), completed his Master’s Thesis, “In Quest of Incarnation”, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1988-89 Lapeyrouse delivered a series of public lectures titled Chrysopylae Lectures: “The Call of Spiritual Nobility”, in Santa Cruz, Palo Alto, Berkeley, and Mt Shasta, California.

After annual summer travels to Russia starting in 1986 he wrote Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics (published in Santa Cruz, California, 1990).

Lapeyrouse moved to Moscow in July 1994.

In 1994 he won the annual prize (shared with Tatyana Morozova) of the literary magazine Moskva for the best article of the year for the first article in the series “Russian-American Dialogue” (for which prize the changed post-Soviet ruble value allowed the purchase of two ice creams or a pair of socks). He participated in a round-table discussion on Russia along with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the Moskva office on Old Arbat Street in 1998.

After 1995 Lapeyrouse worked as a writer and editor for the educational magazine English of the publishing house and newspaper First of September. With some TV appearances over the years, during 2013 he was a special correspondent for eighteen programs of “Brainstorm” on TV Tsentr. He also has been a free-lance contributor to various periodicals since 1994.

In 1998 he founded an independent, open, public English-language lecture forum English Language Evenings (ELE). ELE has had more than 250 meetings with about 180 different speakers from some 15 different countries since it began.

In summer 2013 Lapeyrouse participated in the inauguration ceremony of the “Thoreau Cabin Russia” in the Russian village of Medvedevo during the annual meeting of the Ugory Project.

In 2013 Stephen Lapeyrouse was one of the nominees for The Moscow News special prize “Import of Goodwill” honoring expats who perform community service for public benefit in Russia.

Lapeyrouse continues his studies and travels begun in the early 70s on the history in ideas related to mankind’s ideas of its identity and place and meaning in the cosmos.