Tama Janowitz

Her parents, psychiatrist Julian Janowitz and Phyllis Janowitz (née Winer),{{Cite web|url=https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167107318/phyllis-janowitz|title=Phyllis Winer Janowitz (1930-2014) - Find A Grave...|website=www.findagrave.com|accessdate=April 13, 2021}} a literature professor at Cornell University, divorced when she was ten. She and her brother David grew up with her mother in Massachusetts,[https://books.google.com/books?id=0OcCAAAAMBAJ&dq=Phyllis+Janowitz&pg=PA39 "She'll Take Manhattan"], New York Magazine, July 14, 1986 and, for two years in the late 1960s, in Israel.{{cite web|last1=Fulton|first1=Alice|title=Phyllis Janowitz|url=https://blogs.cornell.edu/deanoffaculty/files/2016/01/JANOWITZ-Phyllis-2fx5wkk.pdf|website=blogs.cornell.edu|publisher=Cornell University|accessdate=September 5, 2016}}

Janowitz graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in 1977 and from Hollins College with an M.A. in 1979.{{cn|date=August 2022}} In 1985 she received an M.F.A from the Columbia University School of the Arts.

Upon settling in New York City, Janowitz started writing about life there, becoming well known in Manhattan literary and social circles.{{cite web|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/|title=Penguin Random House|author=|date=|website=PenguinRandomhouse.com|access-date=January 20, 2019}} She began socializing with pop artist Andy Warhol through her relationship with artist Ronnie Cutrone.{{Cite book |last1=Warhol |first1=Andy |url= |title=The Andy Warhol Diaries |last2=Hackett |first2=Pat |date=1989 |publisher=Warner Books |isbn=978-0-446-51426-2 |location=New York |pages=627 |postscript=Entry date: January 12, 1985}}{{Cite news |last=Trebay |first=Guy |date=2013-08-02 |title=Ronnie Cutrone, a Man of Another, Cooler City |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/fashion/ronnie-cutrone-a-man-of-another-cooler-city.html |access-date=2024-05-15 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} Janowitz's collection of short stories, Slaves of New York, brought her wider fame in 1986."Current Biography Yearbook" is about the 1989 year, Tama Janowitz's biography is on page 278. 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."{{Cite web|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-671-63678-4|website=www.publishersweekly.com|access-date=August 24, 2019|title=Fiction Book Review: Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz, Author Washington Square Press $6.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-671-63678-4}} Warhol mentioned in his diary that the characters Eleanor and Stash in the stories are based on Janowitz and Cutrone.{{Cite book |last1=Warhol |first1=Andy |url= |title=The Andy Warhol diaries |last2=Hackett |first2=Pat |date=1989 |publisher=Warner Books |isbn=978-0-446-51426-2 |location=New York |pages=685 |postscript=Entry date: October 15, 1985}} 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 has published seven novels, one collection of stories and one work of nonfiction. She left Manhattan to live in Brooklyn with her British husband and art-gallery owner, Tim Hunt,{{cite web|last1=Hunt|first1=Timothy|title=Timothy Hunt|url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-hunt-577311a8|website=linkedln.com|publisher=Linkedin|access-date=September 5, 2016}}{{cite web|last1=|title=Tama Janowitz, Writer, Slaves of New York & Tim Hunt, Andy Warhol Foundation|url=https://vimeo.com/55997108|website=vimeo.com|publisher=Vimeo, Inc.|access-date=September 5, 2016}} and their daughter.{{cite web|last=Grigoriadis |first=Vanessa |url=http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/389/ |title=Tama Janowitz, Unchained |publisher=Nymag.com |date=August 9, 1999 |accessdate=August 7, 2010}} She now lives near Ithaca, New York.{{cite news|url=http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/148205/tama-janowitz?all=1|title=Something Really Bad Is Always Happening to Former Literary 'It Girl' Tama Janowitz|author=Batya Ungar-Sargon|date=October 10, 2013|work=Tablet Magazine}}

Her memoir, Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction, was published in August 2016 to reviews both positive and negative. 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. Calhoun wrote, "This memoir—which spans her childhood (partly spent in 1968 Israel, where her family was booted from a hotel for not paying), her adventuresome youth (she had a fling with a 63-year-old Lawrence Durrell when she was 19), her career struggles and successes, and her more recent life as caretaker to her dying mother — shows that she comes by her obsession with money honestly."{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/books/review/tama-janowitz-scream-memoir.html|title=Tama Janowitz Grows Up|first=Ada|last=Calhoun|work=The New York Times |date=August 19, 2016|publisher=|access-date=January 20, 2019|via=NYTimes.com}}

• 1975 Bread Loaf Writers fellowship
• 1976; 1977 Janoway Fiction prize
• 1982 National Endowment award{{cn|date=August 2022}}

• American Dad, Crown, 1981, {{ISBN|978-0-517-56573-5}}; Picador, 1988, {{ISBN|9780330302678}}
• Slaves of New York, Crown Publishers, 1986, {{ISBN|978-0-517-56107-2}}
• Five, (with Constance DeJong, Richard Prince, Joe Gibbons, and Leslie Thornton), New York: Top Stories, 1986, {{ISBN|978-0917061233}}
• A Cannibal in Manhattan, Washington Square Press, July 1988, {{ISBN|978-0-671-66598-2}}
• The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group, Crown Publishers, 1992, {{ISBN|978-0-517-58698-3}}; Simon and Schuster, 1994, {{ISBN|978-0-671-87150-5}}
• By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee Crown Publishers, 1996, {{ISBN|978-0-517-70298-7}}
• A Certain Age, Doubleday, 1999; Anchor Books, 2000, {{ISBN|978-0-385-49611-7}}
• Hear that?, Illustrator Tracy Dockray, SeaStar Books, 2001, {{ISBN|978-1-58717-074-4}}
• Peyton Amberg, Bloomsbury, 2003, {{ISBN|978-0-7475-6138-5}}; Macmillan, 2004, {{ISBN|978-0-312-31845-1}}
• They Is Us, The Friday Project Limited, 2008, {{ISBN|9781906321123}}

• {{cite news| url=http://relativechoices.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/the-real-thing/| title=The Real Thing| work=The New York Times| date=November 12, 2007 | first=Tama | last=Janowitz}}
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=_v-PrsA5ekcC&q=Tama+Janowitz Area Code 212], Bloomsbury, 2002, {{ISBN|978-0-7475-5828-6}}; Macmillan, 2005, {{ISBN|978-0-312-32063-8}}
• Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction; Dey Street Books, August 9, 2016 ({{ISBN|978-0062391322}}){{cite web|url=https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062391339/scream|title=Scream - Tama Janowitz - E-book|author=|date=|website=HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher|access-date=January 20, 2019}}

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0899/janowitz/interview.html "My Lunch with Tama"], Random House Bold Type, 08 1999, Laura L. Buchwald
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=0OcCAAAAMBAJ&dq=Phyllis+Janowitz&pg=PA39 "She'll Take Manhattan"], New York Magazine, July 14, 1986
• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20031206002534/http://www.wiredforbooks.org/tamajanowitz/index.htm Audio Interview with Tama Janowitz]}}
• [http://broadstreetonline.org/2016/07/weekend-reading-my-little-pony-a-memoir-by-tama-janowitz/ "My Little Pony: A Memoir by Tama Janowitz]
• {{IMDb name|id=0417921|name=Tama Janowitz}}

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Category:1957 births

Category:Living people

Category:Novelists from San Francisco

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:Barnard College alumni

Category:Columbia University School of the Arts alumni

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American women writers