Michael Thomas (author)

Michael Thomas
Born	Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Education	Master's degree
Alma mater	Hunter College
Notable works	Man Gone Down
Notable awards	International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2009)
Spouse	Yes
Children	Three

Michael Thomas is an American author. He won the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his debut novel Man Gone Down, receiving a prize of €100,000. Man Gone Down is also recommended by The New York Times.

Thomas was born and raised in Boston. He studied for a bachelor's degree at Hunter College in New York City, where he now teaches, and for a master's at Warren Wilson College. He currently lives in New York City, claiming to have never had a proper job although he has worked in several areas, including bars, restaurants, construction, pizza delivery, on film sets and driving a taxi. Thomas is married and lives with his wife and three children in Brooklyn.

Prior to his international success as a novelist, Thomas wrote poetry and performed in the capacity of a singer-songwriter. Later, whilst attending graduate school, he studied a fiction program, with his thesis being a collection of short stories. One of these short stories became his debut novel.

"One day I was doing my laundry and I realised the breaks were chapters, not pages, and I started writing a novel," Thomas said. "I write to images, or lines, and the end came to me – the last two paragraphs, the last line. I was always writing to it. I had to get there."

Thomas's debut novel, Man Gone Down, won the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award on 11 June 2009. The prize, which is the richest literary award in the world (apart from the Nobel Prize in Literature) and is open to novels written in all languages, was €100,000 (£85,000, US$140,000). Thomas was the third author to win with a debut novel, following Andrew Miller's Ingenious Pain (1999) and Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game (2007).

...
Wikipedia