David Leavitt (; born June 23, 1961) is an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

, short story writer, and biographer.

Biography

Leavitt was born in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

to Harold and Gloria Leavitt. Harold was a professor who taught at Stanford University and Gloria was a political activist. Leavitt graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

with a B.A. in English in 1983. After his first book's success, he spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in

Semproniano Semproniano is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Grosseto in the Italian region of Tuscany, about south of Florence and about east of Grosseto. Semproniano borders the following municipalities: Castell'Azzara, Manciano, Roccalbegna ...

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

with his partner. He has also taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. While a student at Yale, Leavitt published two stories in

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

, "Territory" and "Out Here", both of which were included in his first collection, ''Family Dancing'' (nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award). Other published fiction includes the short-story collections ''A Place I've Never Been'', ''Arkansas: Three Novellas'' and ''The Marble Quilt'' and the novels ''The Lost Language of Cranes'', ''Equal Affections'', ''While England Sleeps'' (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize), ''The Page Turner'', ''Martin Bauman'', ''The Body of Jonah Boyd'' and ''The Indian Clerk'' (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award). In 2000, Leavitt moved to

Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...

, and became a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

as well as the founder and editor of the literary journal ''

Subtropics The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical and climate zones to the north and south of the tropics. Geographically part of the temperate zones of both hemispheres, they cover the middle latitudes from to approximately 35° north and ...

''. Leavitt, who is gay, has frequently explored gay issues in his works. As a teenager, he was frequently frightened by gay novels that emphasized the ideal male body. He found this theme, and its suggestion that homoerotic fulfillment was reserved for the exceptionally beautiful young men, intrusive. His writing explores universal themes such as complex family relationships and class and sex exploitation. Illness and death are also recurrent themes in his work, inspired by his experience with his mother's cancer and death when he was growing up. Despite writing many novels, Leavitt has said he feels more confident as a short story writer. He has been criticized for writing too quickly, which he attributes to early experiences with death convincing him that his life as a writer would be short. His work has been considered

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

as well as part of the literary

Brat Pack The ''Brat Pack'' is a nickname given to a group of young actors who frequently appeared together in teen-oriented coming-of-age films in the 1980s. First mentioned in a 1985 ''New York'' magazine article, it is now usually defined as the cast ...

, but he has made "a fierce effort to disassociate" himself from both. He considers his works too long, emotional and descriptive to be minimalist. Leavitt’s favorite novelist is

Penelope Fitzgerald Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 ''The Times'' listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". ''The Ob ...

, his favorite works of hers being ''

The Beginning of Spring ''The Beginning of Spring'' is a 1988 novel by the British author Penelope Fitzgerald. Set in Moscow in 1913, it tells the story of a Moscow-born English-educated print shop owner whose English wife has suddenly abandoned him and their three c ...

'', ''

The Gate of Angels ''The Gate of Angels'' is a 1990 historical novel by the British author Penelope Fitzgerald. It is set in 1912 at a fictional Cambridge college, St Angelicus. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker prize. Plot Fred Fairly, a Junior Fellow o ...

'' and '' The Blue Flower''. He has also been influenced by John Cheever,

Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...

Cynthia Ozick Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Biography Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...

Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life '' Job'' ...

, W. G. Sebald, and

Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and Na ...

, whom he credits for teaching him the importance of humble experiences in great fiction.

Copyright suit

In 1993, the English poet

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...

sued Leavitt for copyright infringement over the publication of his novel ''While England Sleeps'', accusing him of using elements of Spender's memoir ''World Within World'' in the novel. Viking-Penguin, Leavitt's publisher at the time, withdrew the book. In 1995, Houghton Mifflin published a revised version with a preface by Leavitt addressing the controversy. In "Courage in the Telling: The Critical Rise and Fall of David Leavitt", Drew Patrick Shannon argues that the critical backlash that accompanied Spender's suit "allowed riticsto reinforce the boundaries between gay and mainstream literature that Leavitt had previously crossed". Subsequent reviews of Leavitt's work were more favorable. The episode provided Leavitt with the basis for his novella ''The Term-Paper Artist''.

Adaptations

Two of Leavitt's novels have been filmed: '' The Lost Language of Cranes'' (1991) was directed by

Nigel Finch Nigel Lucius Graeme Finch (1 August 1949 – 14 February 1995) was an English film director and filmmaker whose career influenced the growth of British gay cinema. Biography Nigel Finch was born in Tenterden, Kent, the son of Graham and Tibby Fi ...

and ''The Page Turner'' (released under the title '' Food of Love'') was directed by

Ventura Pons Ventura Pons Sala (; born 25 July 1945, in Barcelona, Spain) is a Spanish movie director. He mainly directs films in Catalan but also in Spanish and English. Pons has directed 32 feature films and is one of the best-known Catalan film directors ...

. The rights to a third, ''

The Indian Clerk ''The Indian Clerk'' is a biographical novel by David Leavitt, published in 2007. It is loosely based on the famous partnership between the Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and his British mentor, the mathematician, G.H. Hardy. The nove ...

'', have been optioned by Scott Rudin.

Writings

Collections

*'' Family Dancing'' (1984) *''A Place I've Never Been'' (1990) *''Arkansas'' (1997) *''The Marble Quilt'' (2001)

Novels

*'' The Lost Language of Cranes'' (1986) *'' Equal Affections'' (1989) *''While England Sleeps'' (1993; revised and reissued 1995) *''The Page Turner'' (1998) *''Martin Bauman'' (2000) *''

The Body of Jonah Boyd ''The Body of Jonah Boyd'' is a novel by David Leavitt, published in 2004, that depicts various consequences of the theft of a manuscript. It tells a story about the life of a common American family dealing with ethical principles, relations ...

'' (2004) *''

'' (2007) *'' The Two Hotel Francforts'' (2013) *''Shelter in Place'' (2020)

Non-fiction

*''Florence, A Delicate Case'' (2003) *''The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer'' (2006)

Co-authored and edited collections

*''The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories'' (1993) (editor, with Mark Mitchell) *''Italian Pleasures'' (1996) (with Mark Mitchell) *''Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914'' (1997) (editor, with Mark Mitchell) *''In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany'' (2001) (with Mark Mitchell)

Anthologies

*"Chips Is Here." ''The Company of Dogs ,'' edited by Michael J. Rosen, Doubleday (1990)