Tama Janowitz Biography

American writer, born in San Francisco, educated at Columbia University. Her first novel, American Dad (1981), an ironic Bildungsroman, was followed by the bestselling Slaves of New York (1986), a collection of short stories which chronicle the efforts of a number of failed artists, writers, and film-makers in New York's Lower East Side to find fame, fortune, and happiness. A Cannibal in Manhattan (1987), a black comedy about a cannibal chief's visit to the wilder shores of America, was an ambitious portrayal of the absurdities of metropolitan life. The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group (1992), like her other work, is set in New York, and offers a familiar mix of farcical incident, wry observation, and lurid description of low-life scenes, culminating in a car chase across America in which the heroine is accompanied by a small boy dressed as a girl, and a severed head.