| Darin Strauss | |
| Birth Place: | Roslyn Harbor (Long Island), United States |
| Occupation: | Author |
| Nationality: | American |
| Alma Mater: | Tufts University New York University |
| Period: | 21st century |
| Spouse: | Susannah Meadows |
Darin Strauss is an American writer whose work has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's 2011 book Half a Life, won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography. His most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, came out in August 2020. It was nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.[1]
Strauss was born in the Long Island town of Roslyn Harbor. He attended Tufts University, where he studied with Jay Cantor. After attending graduate school at New York University, he played guitar in a band with Jonathan Coulton.
Strauss' 2000 first novel Chang & Eng, – a runner-up for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the Literary Lions Award, a Borders Award winner, and a nominee for the PEN Hemingway award is based on the lives of conjoined twins Chang and Eng. It was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a Newsweek Best Book of the Year. The rights to the novel were optioned to Disney, for the director Julie Taymor; the actor Gary Oldman purchased the rights from Disney. Strauss and Oldman are together adapting Chang and Eng for the screen.
Strauss's second book, The Real McCoy (2002), was based on the life of the boxer Charles "Kid McCoy." "The Real McCoy" was named a New York Times Notable Book," and one of the "25 Best Books of the Year," by the New York Public Library.
It was after this novel that Strauss won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction Writing.[2] [3]
Strauss's third novel, More Than It Hurts You, his first in a contemporary setting, was published by PenguinPutnam in 2008. Strauss blogged about his extensive book-tour for Newsweek, and was featured on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and Good Morning America.
Strauss appeared on This American Life in a July 2008 episode titled "Life After Death," in which he talks about the effects of a traffic accident during high school, in which a classmate on a bicycle swerved in front of his car, and was killed. Although he could not have avoided the accident, and was not at fault, he still felt guilty, and it affected him for decades.[4]
His next book, Half a Life is a memoir concerning that traffic accident; it was published by McSweeney's in September 2010, and was excerpted in GQ magazine, and This American Life, and also in The Times and The Daily Mail (UK). Half a Life was named an Entertainment Weekly Must Read and a New York Times Editor's Pick—and a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Amazon, The Plain Dealer, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among many others. Half a Life was called "a masterpiece" by Robert McCrum in The Guardian,[5] "one of the best books I have ever read" by Ali Catterall on the BBC,[6] as well as "precise, elegantly written, fresh, wise, and very sad ... indicative not only of a very talented writer, but of a proper human being" by Nick Hornby.[7]
Half a Life won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography).
Strauss' most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, is a hybrid of fiction, biography, and memoir, focused around an imagined love-affair between the author's grandfather and Lucille Ball. It has received favorable reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. The Millions declared, of the novel, "The best book yet from one of our best writers."[8] In "New Pop Lit," Karl Wenclas wrote, "If Darin Strauss isn't the best contemporary American writer, he's near the top ... No one could write a better book!"[9] On NBC News, Bill Goldstein said "I love this book ... Brilliant."
The novel was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, a The Millions and Lit Hub Best Book of the Year, and a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, as well as being featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NBC News, the CW, and PBSs Articulate.[10]
Strauss has been called "a brave new voice in literature" by The Wall Street Journal,[11] and "one of the most sharp and spirited of his generation," by Powells Books, "sublime" and "brilliant" by The Boston Globe.[12]
Strauss is married to journalist Susannah Meadows, who writes a monthly Newly Released Books column for The New York Times daily Arts Section. He is the father of identical twin boys. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at New York University.