CHRISTOPHER BRAM

Christopher Bram is the author of nine novels, including The Notorious Dr. August and Lives of the Circus Animals. His fifth novel, Gods and Monsters, became the Oscar-winning movie starring Ian McKellan, Brendan Fraser, and Lynn Redgrave, and was directed by Bill Condon. His most recent novel is Exiles in America.

Bram is known as one of America’s best gay novelists, yet his fiction covers a broad range of topics. He has written about race, politics, Hollywood, contemporary theater, Iranians in exile, and Victorian music. His books have been compared to the best work of Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood, and Henry James. Bram is a 2001 Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the 2003 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. He has been writer in residence at Vassar and William and Mary.

In addition to writing fiction, he has reviewed books and movies for such publications as the New York Times Book Review, Premiere, New York Newsday, Lambda Book Report, and the James White Review. His literary and autobiographical essays have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. He also writes screenplays, including a prize-winning short, Dangerous Music, directed by his life partner Draper Shreeve. He recently collaborated with Shreeve on a screenplay about the life of Tallulah Bankhead now being developed by actress Patricia Clarkson.

Bram was born in 1952 and grew up outside Norfolk, Virginia, and attended the College of William and Mary on an ROTC army scholarship. After his discharge from the army and graduation in 1974, he moved to New York City to work for the Social Security Administration. He soon left federal employment, however, to pursue his love of books and movies, working first at Scribner’s Bookstore, then the New York Native, the controversial gay weekly. He reviewed movies for the Native until he published his first novel, Surprising Myself, in 1987. He currently lives in New York City.