Paul Auster

Auster studied at Columbia University, then spent his early twenties scraping by in Paris on translation work and odd jobs, an apprenticeship in literary poverty he later recounted in the memoir Hand to Mouth. He returned to New York broke, wrote poetry and essays for years before turning to fiction, and found his voice with The Invention of Solitude, a meditation on his father's death and his own absent inheritance.

The New York Trilogy, three interlocking detective stories that dissolve into questions of identity and authorship, established the coincidence-driven, self-reflexive machinery that ran through his subsequent novels. He also wrote screenplays, including Smoke and Blue in the Face, and was married first to the writer Lydia Davis, then to the novelist Siri Hustvedt.

He died in 2024 of complications from cancer, not long after the death of his son.