Jonathan Dee

Jonathan Dee is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and journalist who has published over a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction. He has been lauded for his insightful, sometimes lyrical, and often heartbreaking depictions of everyday life in America.

A native of Long Island, New York, Jonathan Dee grew up in an Irish-Italian-American Catholic household. He graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an honors degree in history, and briefly attended law school. Instead of pursuing a career in law, Dee chose to focus his energy on writing, and has been a full-time professional writer since 1991.

Dee's works of fiction explore the foibles, humiliation, and occasional joys of contemporary life in America. His acclaimed novels include The Liberty Campaign (1998), a story of a young man's battle against depression; A Thousand Pardons (2013), which follows the dissolution of a marriage in the wake of a social media scandal; and The Locals (2016), a tale of a post-9/11 small town in rural Massachusetts.

The author's debut novel, Random Hearts (1999), earned him a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies. His 2003 memoir, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, delivered a collection of essays that reflect upon the events of the new millennium.

Dee's nonfiction works include a collection of polished essays on the state of American life, Politics and the Novel (2004), and a study of the country's spiritual life, Episcopal: The Rise and Fall of an American Church (2012).

Avid readers of Jonathan Dee's work will be pleased to learn that a new novel is in the works. The Book of Intimate Grammar is due to be published in the fall of 2021.

Perhaps more impressive than Jonathan Dee's writing is his professional accomplishments. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Cullman Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2014, he was appointed to the Edward F. Albee Foundation board.

As an educator, Dee has shared his advice on the craft at colleges such as Yale and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He also teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College.

Jonathan Dee is an author with a distinguished career of writing fiction and nonfiction that is both contemporary and timeless. His works map the trials and tribulations of American life with a voice that is brimming with intelligence, empathy, and wit. His fans find much to admire and appreciate in the literary landscapes that he creates.