Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is an American novelist, screenwriter, and columnist.

Chabon’s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25. After its publication, Chabon was mistakenly featured in a Newsweek article on rising young gay writers. In an essay he later wrote, Chabon discussed the events in his life that in part inspired his first novel:

I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him.^[1]

He has since continued to write novels including Wonder Boys (1995) and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2001), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Chabon’s fiction is known for using complex and often metaphorical prose to portray characters and themes that involve Judaism, bisexuality, homosexuality, divorce, abandonment, and fatherhood — although many aspects of his writing vary stylistically from work to work. Along with novels, he has published nonfiction books, short stories, children’s books, comics, and newspaper serials. Chabon has written for television, co-creating and writing Star Trek: Picard (2020–), as well as screenplays, including Spider-Man 2 (2004) and John Carter (2012).

He was married to poet Lollie Groth in 1987, but they divorced in 1991. He married writer Ayelet Waldman in 1993. They live together in Berkeley, California, with their four children.