Bret Easton Ellis

Novelist Bret Easton Ellis rocketed to fame with his first book, 1985's Less Than Zero, published while Ellis was a student at Vermont's Bennington College (his fellow students included future literature stars Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem). The book -- and the 1987 movie version -- struck a chord with an American public eager to learn about rich and pretty drug users having sex. The publicity and hype surrounding the book put Ellis in the spotlight, and the subsequent focus on his celebrity made it difficult for critics to separate the writer from his work. Ellis has since played into that and continues to blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction. Not a prolific author, Ellis nonetheless maintains a respectable career; a new novel is still an event guaranteed to earn reviews from "is he really that good?" to "he really is that good." His other novels include The Rules of Attraction (1987), American Psycho (1990), Glamorama (1998), Lunar Park (2005) and Imperial Bedrooms (2010). He has also published a collection of connected stories, The Informers (1994), and a novella, Water from the Sun (2006). Ellis is known especially for his skill at provocation over the years, and his collection of contrary columns in 2019, White, did indeed make headlines, although more of the "he's at it again" variety than anything of substance or controversy.