Jay McInerney

Jay McInerney
McInerney at Pen America/Free Expression Literature, May 2014
Born	John Barrett McInerney, Jr. (1955-01-13) January 13, 1955 (age 62) Hartford, Connecticut
Alma mater	Williams College
Occupation	Writer
Spouse(s)	Linda Rossite Merry Raymond Helen Bransford Anne Hearst (2006-present)
Children	2

John Barrett "Jay" McInerney, Jr. (/ˈmækᵻnɜːrni/; born January 13, 1955) is an American novelist. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages. He edited The Penguin Book of New American Voices, wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of Bright Lights, Big City, and co-wrote the screenplay for the television film Gia, which starred Angelina Jolie. He was the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, and his essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000) and A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006). His most recent novel is titled Bright, Precious Days, published in 2016, and since April 2010 he has been a wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, he published a book of short stories which spanned his entire career, titled How It Ended, which was named one of the 10 best books of the year by Janet Maslin of The New York Times.

McInerney was born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Marilyn Jean (Murphy) and John Barrett McInerney, Jr., a corporate executive. He graduated from Williams College in 1976. At Syracuse University, he earned a Master of Arts in English and studied Writing with Raymond Carver. After working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, he achieved fame with his first published novel, Bright Lights, Big City. Published in 1984, the novel was unique at the time for its depiction of cocaine culture in second-person narrative. The title is taken from a 1961 blues song by Jimmy Reed. The novel established McInerney's reputation as part of a new generation of writers. Labelled the 'literary brat pack' in a 1987 article in the Village Voice, McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz were presented as the new face of literature: young, iconoclastic and fresh. Five novels followed in rapid succession: Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages and Model Behavior.