Stephen Amidon is an American author and film critic. He grew up on the East Coast of the United States of America, including a spell in Columbia, Maryland, which served as the inspiration for his fourth novel The New City. Amidon attended Wake Forest University as a Guy T. Carswell Scholar, majoring in philosophy. He moved to London, UK, in 1987, where he was given his first job as a critic by Auberon Waugh, who invited him to review a novel for The Literary Review. Shortly after this Amidon sold his first work of fiction; the short story "Echolocation" was chosen by Ian Hamilton for inclusion in the Bloomsbury anthology Soho Square II. He was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary for the short story in 1990. In 1999 he returned to the US. His literary criticism and essays have appeared in many publications in North America and the UK and he has also worked as a film critic for the Financial Times and the Sunday Times. In November, 2013, Amidon was on the jury of the 31st Torino Film Festival. Stephen Amidon is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, the most recent of which, Security, was released by FSG in 2009. 

January 1st, 1969 in Chicago (Age 55)