Nathaniel Rich Photo by Mark Schafer

about the author

Nathaniel Rich

Senior Editor of The Paris Review and Author of The Mayor's Tongue

Nathaniel Rich grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Yale. He worked at The New York Review of Books before moving to The Paris Review, where he edits the magazine’s fiction, nonfiction, and author interviews. Currently the senior editor of The Paris Review, he has published essays and criticism in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Slate, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, and Vanity Fair.

Rich’s recent novel The Mayor’s Tongue (Riverhead, 2008) has been praised by The Washington Post as a “goofy, playful, highly intellectual novel about serious subjects,” and has earned nods from critics across the country. Martin Scorsese called his acclaimed nonfiction book, San Francisco Noir, “a fascinating work of film criticism disguised as a guided tour around a great city” and The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Best Books of 2005.

Rich is a member of the Young Lions Committee at the New York Public Library, and is the founder and director of the Hald Danish-American Writers’ Retreat, an event held annually in Denmark for Danish and American writers. He lives in Brooklyn.

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Featured Book

The Mayor's Tongue

“Ambitious, intelligent, hallucinatory, and, most important: heartfelt. Here is a young writer who is not afraid to give literature a kick in the pants, a writer deep in the thrall of language.”

—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Speaking Topics

  • The Mayor’s Tongue
  • Writing—and Editing—Fiction
  • Literary Magazines, the Next Generation
  • How to Pursue a Writing Career After College
  • Film Noir

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