Ned Vizzini
| Ned Vizzini | |
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Ned Vizzini in 2011
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| Born | Edison Price Vizzini April 4, 1981 New York City, United States |
| Died | December 19, 2013 (aged 32) Brooklyn, New York, US |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | B.A., Computer Science |
| Alma mater | Hunter College |
| Period | 1998–2013 |
| Genre | Young adult fiction |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse | Sabra Embury |
| Website | |
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Ned Vizzini (born Edison Price Vizzini, April 4, 1981 – December 19, 2013) was an American writer. He was the author of four books for young adults including It's Kind of a Funny Story, which NPR named #56 of the "100 Best-Ever Teen Novels" of all time and which is the basis of the film of the same name.
Vizzini suffered from depression, spending time in a psychiatric ward in his early 20s, and authoring several works about the illness. He was found dead in his native Brooklyn, New York after an apparent suicide from a fall, aged 32.
Ned Vizzini grew up primarily in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, graduating in 1999. Vizzini's characters and situations are said to be based upon his time spent at Stuyvesant.
Vizzini's first published work was an essay he submitted to the New York Press, an alternative newspaper, about winning honorable mention at the 1996 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. As a freelance writer for the paper, he wrote about everything from family vacations to getting drunk in the street with other kids. The success of Vizzini's work earned him an invitation to contribute a teen-focused article to the New York Times Magazine.
In May 1998, Vizzini's essay "Teen Angst? Nah!" appeared in The New York Times. Following this, several of his New York Press columns became the core of his first book, Teen Angst? Naaah.... which is a memoir of his teenage years. It consists of a collection of short stories most of which were originally published in The New York Press and The New York Times Magazine. The book is broken down by years covering junior high through high school and beyond. Vizzini attended Hunter College, located in Manhattan. In 2004 his first novel Be More Chill was published. A review for the New York Times Book Review said that Be More Chill, which is about a high school student named Jeremy Heere who gets a supercomputer pill in his brain that makes him cool, "is so accurate that it should come with a warning." Others have criticized the book for its language and lack of a clear moral. In 2006 Vizzini's second novel It's Kind of a Funny Story was published. It is based on Vizzini's five-day stay in Brooklyn's Methodist Hospital psychiatric ward. The book recounts fifteen-year-old Craig Gilner's battle with suicidal depression as a result of a taxing school year at Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School that exacerbates his feeling of social inadequacy. In 2012 Vizzini's third novel The Other Normals was published. The Other Normals is an "Alternative Fantasy" about a teenager who falls into a fantasy world that is the basis of his favorite role-playing game.
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Wikipedia