Tama Janowitz

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American novelist (born 1956)

title: "Tama Janowitz" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1957-births", "living-people", "novelists-from-san-francisco", "20th-century-american-novelists", "barnard-college-alumni", "columbia-university-school-of-the-arts-alumni", "21st-century-american-novelists", "20th-century-american-women-novelists", "21st-century-american-women-novelists"] description: "American novelist (born 1956)" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_Janowitz" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American novelist (born 1956) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer"]

Field	Value
name	Tama Janowitz
birth_place	United States
occupation	Writer
genre	Fiction
education	Barnard College (BA)
Hollins College (MA)
Columbia University School of the Arts (MFA)
::

Tama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. She is especially known for her novel-in-stories Slaves of New York (1986), 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.

Career

Upon settling in New York City, Janowitz started writing about life there, becoming well known in Manhattan literary and social circles. 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.

Her memoir, Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction, was published in August 2016 to mixed reviews. In The New York Times Book Review, Ada Calhoun noted Janowitz's deadpan, almost careless way of looking at her own life and the glamor of hanging out with Andy Warhol and dancing at Studio 54. The review also addressed the concern with material goods and financial security that drives many of Janowitz's novels and led her to appear in ads for Amaretto and other products, writing that it "shows that she comes by her obsession with money honestly."

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,

Nonfiction

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

References

Wyatt, Edward. (August 7, 2005). "Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror". New York Times.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=0OcCAAAAMBAJ&dq=Phyllis+Janowitz&pg=PA39 "She'll Take Manhattan"], ''New York Magazine'', July 14, 1986
"Phyllis Janowitz". Cornell University.
"Penguin Random House".
(1989). "The Andy Warhol Diaries". Warner Books.
Trebay, Guy. (2013-08-02). "Ronnie Cutrone, a Man of Another, Cooler City". The New York Times.
"Current Biography Yearbook" is about the 1989 year, Tama Janowitz's biography is on page 278.
"Fiction Book Review: Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz, Author Washington Square Press $6.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-671-63678-4".
(1989). "The Andy Warhol diaries". Warner Books.
Calhoun, Ada. (August 19, 2016). "Tama Janowitz Grows Up". The New York Times.
[https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/12/01/tim-huntflaneur-and-the-curator-of-the-andy-warhol-foundationhas-died-aged-60]
"Timothy Hunt". Linkedin.
"Tama Janowitz, Writer, Slaves of New York & Tim Hunt, Andy Warhol Foundation". Vimeo, Inc..
Grigoriadis, Vanessa. (August 9, 1999). "Tama Janowitz, Unchained". Nymag.com.
Batya Ungar-Sargon. (October 10, 2013). "Something Really Bad Is Always Happening to Former Literary 'It Girl' Tama Janowitz". Tablet Magazine.
"Scream - Tama Janowitz - E-book".

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