Jonathan Dee

Early life

Dee was born in New York City. He graduated from Yale University, where he studied fiction writing with John Hersey.

Career

Dee's first job out of college was at The Paris Review, as an Associate Editor and personal assistant to George Plimpton. Early in his tenure with Plimpton, Dee helped pull off the popular April Fool's joke about Sidd Finch, a fictitious baseball pitcher Plimpton wrote about for Sports Illustrated.

Dee has published seven novels, including The Lover of History, The Liberty Campaign, St. Famous, Palladio, The Privileges, A Thousand Pardons, and, most recently, The Locals. He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and contributor to Harper's. He taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and The New School, and is a currently a professor in the graduate writing program at Syracuse University.

Dee collaborated on the oral biography of Plimpton, "George, Being George", published by Random House in 2008. He interviewed Hersey and co-interviewed Grace Paley for The Paris Review's The Art of Fiction series.

Awards and fellowships

Dee was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2010 for criticism in Harper's. He has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His 2010 novel, The Privileges, won the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald prize and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was the second winner of the St. Francis College Literary Prize.

Personal life

He lives in Syracuse, New York, with the writer Dana Spiotta.