David R. Slavitt

David Rytman Slavitt (born 1935) is a writer, poet, and translator, the author of more than 100 books.

Slavitt has written a number of novels and numerous translations from Greek, Latin, and other languages, Slavitt wrote a number of popular novels under the pseudonym Henry Sutton, starting in the late 1960s. The Exhibitionist (1967) was a bestseller and sold over 4 million copies. He has also published popular novels under the names of David Benjamin, Lynn Meyer, and Henry Lazarus.

His first work, a book of poems titled Suits for the Dead, was published in 1961. He worked as a writer and film critic for Newsweek from 1958 to 1965.

Henry S. Taylor, winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, has written, "David Slavitt is among the most accomplished living practitioners" of writing, "in both prose and verse; his poems give us a pleasurable, beautiful way of meditating on a bad time. We can't ask much more of literature, and usually we get far less."

Novelist and poet James Dickey wrote, "Slavitt has such an easy, tolerant, believable relationship with the ancient world and its authors that making the change-over from that world to ours is less a leap than an enjoyable stroll. The reader feels a continual sense of gratitude."

Georgia Jones-Davis, a poet and journalist, has said, "Slavitt is brilliant and he writes with grace, passion and humor."

Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York on March 23, 1935, the son of Samuel Saul Slavitt (a lawyer) and Adele Beatrice Slavitt (a paralegal).

Slavitt attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where his first writing teacher was Dudley Fitts. He received an undergraduate degree from Yale University (where he studied under Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren and was elected class poet, "Scholar of the House," in 1956), graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude), and then a Master's degree in English from Columbia University in 1957.

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