David Leavitt

For other people named David Leavitt, see David Leavitt (disambiguation).

David Leavitt
Born	June 23, 1961(1961-06-23) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	short story writer, novelist, essayist, professor
Nationality	American
Literary movement	Minimalism, Gay Literature
Notable work(s)	Family Dancing, The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps
Notable award(s)	finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award 1983
Influences Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Charles Warren Stoddard, Charles Henri Ford, Djuna Barnes, Lincoln Kirstein, Truman Capote, Robert Louis Stevenson, Gore Vidal, Edmund White, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino
Influenced Bret Easton Ellis, Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Michael Chabon

David Leavitt (born June 23, 1961) is an American novelist.

Biography

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Leavitt is a graduate of Yale University.^[1] and a professor at the University of Florida. He has also taught at Princeton.

He is the author of Family Dancing, Equal Affections, The Page Turner, Martin Bauman, or A Sure Thing, The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps (for the publication of which he was sued by the poet Stephen Spender), The Body of Jonah Boyd, and numerous short stories. His most recent novel is The Indian Clerk. Leavitt, who is openly gay,^[2] has frequently explored gay issues in his work.^[1]

At the University of Florida, he is a member of the Creative Writing faculty and is also the editor of Subtropics magazine, the University of Florida's literary review. He divides his time between Florida and Tuscany, Italy. Many of his books have been translated into Italian and published there.

In 1994–5, Leavitt was sued by the English poet Stephen Spender, who claimed Leavitt had plagiarized his memoir in While England Sleeps.^[3] Subsequently, Viking Press, Leavitt's publishers, agreed to delete a passage that closely paralleled Spender's. The publishers also agreed never to publish the manuscript that had become the subject of the charge of plagiarism. In addition, Spender claimed that Leavitt had fictionalized his life, especially by adding graphic, scatological, fantasies attributed to the character modeled after Spender (in particular, "allegedly using his relationship with 'Jimmy Younger'"). "If he wants to write about sexual fantasies, he should write about his own," the poet said.^[4]

Bibliography

Novels The Lost Language of Cranes (1986) Equal Affections (1989) While England Sleeps (1993; revised and reissued 1995) Gravity The Page Turner (1998) Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing (2000) The Body of Jonah Boyd (2004) The Indian Clerk (2007)

Collections Family Dancing (1984) A Place I've Never Been (1990) Arkansas (1997) The Marble Quilt (2001)

Nonfiction

• Italian Pleasures (1996) (with Mark Mitchell)
• Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914 (1997) (editor, with Mark Mitchell)
• In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany (2001) (with Mark Mitchell)
• Florence, A Delicate Case (2003)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (2005)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Lawson, Don S. (2007-10-11). "Leavitt, David". glbtq.com. http://www.glbtq.com/literature/leavitt_d.html. Retrieved 2008-01-08. 
2. ^ Pela, Robert L. (1997-04-01). "Uncensorable Leavitt - gay author David Leavitt - Interview" (– ^{Scholar search}). The Advocate. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n730/ai_20139159. Retrieved 2008-01-08 ^{[dead link][dead link]}
3. ^ Stephen Spender's entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
4. ^ Stephen Spender: "My Life Is Mine: It Is Not David Leavitt's", The New York Times, 4 Sep 1994

External links

• David Leavitt's website at the University of Florida
• BBC Radio 4 Interview about The Body of Jonah Boyd
• Econoculture Interview, February 2 2006 by Paul Morton
• Recorded keystrokes of Leavitt writing a poem on surprise topic with 15 minute time limit
• Website for Subtropics Magazine
• Interview with Identity Theory

Persondata
Name	Leavitt, David
Alternative names
Short description	Novelist, short story writer, essayist, professor
Date of birth	June 23, 1961
Place of birth	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Date of death
Place of death