Jerome Charyn is an American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him ?one of the most important writers in American literature.? New York Newsday hailed Charyn as ?a contemporary American Balzac,? and the Los Angeles Times described him as ?absolutely unique among American writers.? Since the 1964 release of Charyn?s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Fiction, 1983. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching. 

May 13th, 1937 in The Bronx (Age 87)