Who

Lethem may be the closest thing to a heartthrob the New York literary world's got.

Backstory

Lethem was raised in a commune in Brooklyn: His mother, Judith, was an anti-war activist who died from brain cancer when Jonathan was 13; his father, a painter, worked as a carpenter to pay the bills. Raised on Dean Street in Boerum Hill—the nabe that would serve as the setting for The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn—Jonathan attended the High School for Music and Art before earning an art scholarship to Bennington. But he ended up dropping out of college during his sophomore year, moving to the San Francisco Bay area, where he spent the next 10 years working in bookstores and writing in his spare time. In 1994, he published his first novel, the sci-fi-meets-Raymond-Chandler tale Gun, With Occasional Music.

Three more sci-fi-ish novels followed, attracting a dedicated cult fanbase, but his breakout didn't come along until 1999 when the author, who'd moved back to New York, released Motherless Brooklyn, narrated by a Tourette's-suffering apprentice hoodlum named Lionel Essrog. The book won the National Book Critic's Circle Award and earned Lethem swift billing as the Next Big Thing. He followed up with the semi-autobiographical The Fortress of Solitude in 2003. In 2005 he was awarded a MacArthur "genius grant," cementing his status as New York's literary golden boy.

Lethem's most recent novel, 2007's You Don't Love Me Yet, was an uncharacteristically light affair about a rock band in LA. Its modest scope—no genre-bending or weighty themes—and West Coast setting led to suggestions that it was an old manuscript, dusted off for publication.

Upcoming

Motherless Brooklyn the movie is in the pipeline. It's being adapted by Ed Norton, who will star as well as direct. Lethem recently gave the film rights for You Don't Love Me Yet to fledgling writer-director Greg Marcks, waiving an up-front paycheck in exchange for two percent of the film's budget, to be paid when the completed film gets a distribution deal.

For the record

It's pronounced LEE-thum, not LETH-um.

Family ties

Lethem's younger sister is Mara Faye, a photographer, and his younger brother is Blake, a street artist ("Keo") who was once arrested and jailed for "making graffiti."

Personal

Don't let the geeky exterior fool you—Lethem is quite the ladies' man. His first wife was writer Shelley Jackson, well known for her "Skin" project of a story told in tattoos; wife number two was film producer Julia Rosenberg, whom he divorced in 2003. He's now married to Amy Barrett, a writer and filmmaker; they split their time between Brooklyn and their farmhouse in Maine.