Blake Nelson is an American author of adult and children's literature. He grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended Wesleyan University and New York University. Nelson began his career writing short humor pieces for Details magazine in the mid-nineties. These articles, with titles like "How to Date a Feminist" and "How to Live on $3600 a year", explored the slacker west coast lifestyle. His first novel Girl was excerpted in Sassy magazine in three successive issues. The mail Sassy received in response was key to the eventual publication of Girl. Girl has since been published in eight foreign countries and made into a film of the same name. The novel was reissued as a young adult novel by Simon & Schuster young adult imprint Simon Pulse in October 2007. Nelson's novel Paranoid Park was made into a film of the same name by Gus Van Sant. The book won the prestigious Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy. The film won a special 60th Anniversary prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. 

August 31st, 1965 in Chicago (Age 59)