Contacts

E-mail: jesse@jessebrowner.com
Representation: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents
Publicity: Yelena Gitlin, Bloomsbury USA

Website: Mia Pearlman Design

I was born in New York City in 1961, a proud fourth-generation New Yorker. The city has always been my personal, intimate stomping grounds, and my love for it and tireless fascination with it are reflected in almost everything I write. When I was 8, my family moved to Europe, where I spent the ‘70s until graduating from high school in London. I returned to the States to attend Bard College and spent my junior year at the University of Leningrad, USSR.

I published Conglomeros (Random House) in 1992. That was followed by the novel Turnaway (RH) in 1996 and by the non-fiction The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down: An Informal History of Hospitality in Western Civilization (Bloomsbury) in 2003. My latest novel, The Uncertain Hour, is being published by Bloomsbury in May 2007.

I’m also a literary and diplomatic translator. My work includes, among others, translations of books by Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard and Rainer Maria Rilke, and Frédéric Vitoux’s award-winning Céline: A Biography. Most recently, I translated Matthieu Ricard’s Happiness (Little, Brown ’06).

My freelance writing includes contributions to Nest magazine, Food & Wine, Gastronomica, New York, The New York Times Book Review, and others.

I live in lower Manhattan with my wife and two daughters.