Tama Janowitz

Tama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. She is especially known for her novel-in-stories Slaves of New York, which was adapted into the movie of the same name by Merchant Ivory in 1989. She is often referenced as one of the main "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney.

Early life and education Tama Janowitz' father was a literature professor at Cornell University, and her parents divorced when she was ten. She and her brother David grew up with her mother in Massachusetts, and, for two years in the late 1960s, in Israel.

Janowitz graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in 1977 and from Hollins College with an M.A. in 1979.

In 1985 she received an M.F.A. from the Columbia University School of the Arts. She began socializing with pop artist Andy Warhol through her relationship with artist Ronnie Cutrone.

Janowitz's collection of short stories, Slaves of New York, brought her wider fame in 1986. Publishers Weekly described the book as seven stories featuring a woman named Eleanor, "a diffident young woman who gains entree to the arty milieu of lower Manhattan, which seems to combine elements of Oz and Never-Never-Land with Dante's Inferno." Warhol mentioned in his diary that the characters Eleanor and Stash in the stories are based on Janowitz and Cutrone. The book was adapted into the 1989 film Slaves of New York, which was directed by James Ivory and starring Bernadette Peters. Janowitz wrote the screenplay and also appeared, playing Peters' friend.

Janowitz is often referenced as one of the main "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney.

Personal life Janowitz left Manhattan to live in Brooklyn with her British husband and art-gallery owner, Tim Hunt (younger brother of 1976 Formula One World Champion James Hunt) and their daughter. In 2013 she was living near Ithaca, New York.

Awards

1975: Bread Loaf Writers fellowship 1976; 1977: Janoway Fiction prize 1982: National Endowment Award

Publications Fiction American Dad, Crown, 1981, ; Picador, 1988, Slaves of New York, Crown Publishers, 1986, Five, (with Constance DeJong, Richard Prince, Joe Gibbons, and Leslie Thornton), New York: Top Stories, 1986, A Cannibal in Manhattan, Washington Square Press, July 1988, The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group, Crown Publishers, 1992, ; Simon and Schuster, 1994, By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee Crown Publishers, 1996, A Certain Age, Doubleday, 1999; Anchor Books, 2000, Hear that?, Illustrator Tracy Dockray, SeaStar Books, 2001, Peyton Amberg, Bloomsbury, 2003, ; Macmillan, 2004, They Is Us, The Friday Project Limited, 2008, I baffi di Anne, Cantoni Editore, 2025,

Nonfiction

Area Code 212, Bloomsbury, 2002, ; Macmillan, 2005, Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction; Dey Street Books, August 9, 2016