Isaac Fitzgerald is an American writer and author, best known for his 2022 memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts. He was born in Boston but spent much of his childhood in Athol, Massachusetts. [1] Fitzgerald is a frequent guest on The Today Show where he shares book recommendations. [2] [3] [4]
He joined The Rumpus, a literary magazine, as the first employee in 2009, [5] 10 months after Stephen Elliott founded the publication. There he published essays by writers such as Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed. After four years at The Rumpus, he moved to publishing house McSweeney's to be the director of publicity. In 2013, he became the first book editor at BuzzFeed, [6] [4] where he also hosted a live morning show, "AM to DM," with writer and poet Saeed Jones.
Fitzgerald is also the author of the children's book How to Be a Pirate. Fitzgerald is based in Brooklyn, New York. [4]
Fitzgerald has published two books about tattoos, both of which he co-wrote with the illustrator Wendy MacNaughton. The books describe the stories behind people's tattoos, collected and edited by Fitzgerald, with MacNaughton drawing illustrations of these tattoos.
Michigan Quarterly Review described Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them (2014) as "a strikingly illustrated, curated showcase of tattoos," whose backstories "detail heartrending tragedies, funny accidents, and all manner of circumstances in between." [7]
Fitzgerald and MacNaughton published a sequel in 2016, Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos.
Fitzgerald's memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, describes his tumultuous upbringing in the small town of Athol, in western Massachusetts. He writes about his use of drugs and alcohol from an early age, his time at Cushing Academy and later George Washington University, from which he graduated in 2005. [8] The book goes on to explore his early adulthood, including his move to San Francisco, his work as a bartender, pornography actor, and volunteering for a missionary group, Free Burma Rangers, in Thailand and Myanmar. [4] The book appeared on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list in August 2022. [9]
The memoir consists of a collection of essays, not all of which are in chronological order. The Boston Globe reviewed the book positively, describing its stories as "worth hearing and thinking about, even if, like life, it's sometimes messy and out of order." [10]
A review of Dirtbag, Massachusetts in The New York Times described the book as being "about the ways men struggle to make sense of themselves and the romance men too often find in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey," comparing it to works by Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Richard Price, and Pete Hamill. [11] The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "painfully honest but sincerely funny," and that his stories "resonate as a modern look at what it’s like to feel lost in America." [12]
Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition.
Hiram Frederick Moody III is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought him widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into the film The Ice Storm. Many of his works have been praised by fellow writers and critics alike.
Steve Almond is an American short-story writer, essayist and author of ten books, three of which are self-published.
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist. The author of influential works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, Zeroville and Shadowbahn, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Rajeev Balasubramanyam is a British writer. His novels include, In Beautiful Disguises, The Dreamer, Starstruck and Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss. His short stories have been published in numerous anthologies across the world, including New Writing 12, Fugue, and The Missouri Review. He writes regularly for VICE, Salon, The Washington Post, New Statesman, Frieze, the London Review of Books, The Rumpus, and Media Diversified.
Caroline Paul is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction.
Stephen Elliott is an American writer, editor, and filmmaker who has written and published seven books and directed two films. He is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the online literary magazine The Rumpus. In December 2014, he became senior editor at Epic Magazine.
Robert T. Westbrook is an American writer. He was born to columnist Sheilah Graham five years after the death of her lover F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (2010), and the essay collections, Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).
Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator and graphic journalist based in San Francisco. MacNaughton has published eleven books, including three New York Times best-sellers. MacNaughton's work combines illustration, journalism, and social work to tell the stories of overlooked people and places. Her art has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, Juxtapoz, GOOD, Time Out NY, 7x7, and Gizmodo. She has created magazine cover images for 7x7 and Edible SF. Her illustrated documentary series, "Meanwhile," was first published in The Rumpus in 2010, then in 2014 as a book, Meanwhile in San Francisco, the City in Its Own Words. In 2016, 'Meanwhile' became the regular back page column in California Sunday magazine.
Benjamin Anastas is an American novelist, memoirist, journalist and book reviewer born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He teaches literature and writing at Bennington College and is on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.
The Rumpus is an online literary magazine founded by Stephen Elliott, and launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as original fiction and poetry. The site runs two subscription-based book clubs and two subscription-based letters programs, Letters in the Mail and Letters for Kids.
Nick Hurst is an English writer who in 2012 published his first book Sugong: The Life of a Shaolin Grandmaster.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan is a 2009 memoir by Jake Adelstein of his years living in Tokyo as the first non-Japanese reporter working for one of Japan's largest newspapers, Yomiuri Shinbun. It was published by Random House and Pantheon Books. HBO adapted the memoir into a 2022 television series. According to Gavin J. Blair of The Hollywood Reporter, there were individuals that disputed whether certain events in the book happened as stated.
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division (2013), and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). Laymon was awarded a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Fellows Program in 2022.
Wendy C. Ortiz is an American essayist, creative nonfiction writer, fiction writer, psychotherapist, and poet.
Sari Wilson is an American novelist and writer. She has written prose and comics, and is the author of the novel Girl Through Glass. Wilson's short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in literary journals such as AGNI, the Oxford American, and Slice. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Catapult.
Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking is a 2017 cookbook written by American chef Samin Nosrat and illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton. The book was designed by Alvaro Villanueva. It inspired the 2018 American four-part cooking docu-series Salt Fat Acid Heat.
Thomas Page McBee is an American transgender journalist, television writer, and amateur boxer. He was the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden, which he discusses in Amateur. His first book, Man Alive, won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man is a nonfiction book by Thomas Page McBee, published August 14, 2018, by Scribner.