Proofs of the Illusion: A Moonglow Scrapbook
The 2023 Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters
Michael Chabon is a bestselling novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. He was born in 1963, in Washington, D.C. and raised mostly in Columbia, a planned city with utopian aspirations in the Maryland tobacco country. He studied at Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, and has spent most of the past two decades in California. Since 1997, he has been living with his wife, Ayelet Waldman, also a writer, and their children, in Berkeley.
Chabon’s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was originally written for his master’s thesis at U.C. Irvine and became a New York Times bestseller. This was followed by Wonder Boys, also a bestseller, which was made into a critically-acclaimed film featuring actors Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire. Chabon has gone on to publish several further acclaimed novels in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Gentlemen of the Road, Telegraph Avenue, and Moonglow.
Moonglow was awarded the California Book Award’s Gold Medal as well as the Jewish Book Council’s 2016 Modern Literary Achievement Award.
Chabon has also published a number of essay collections and screenplays.
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