It has been a while since Jonathan Dee ’77 walked the halls of IMS. Back when he attended the school, he was on the tennis, soccer, and basketball teams. He also proudly acknowledges that he was in the poker club, it was, after all, the 1970s. Most notably, he wrote for the literary magazine. Now, so many years later, he is a prominent author and journalist.

 

After leaving IMS, Dee attended Andover and then Yale University. After college he worked for more than five years at the Paris Review. By 1990, while still a young man, Dee published his first book, Lover of History. Now, twenty years later, Dee has published five novels including  Palladio, published in 2003, and most recently The Privileges, which tells the story of a couple and their rise to wealth. The book has received wonderful reviews.  When asked if any of his characters are taken from people he may know, Dee responded, “I take a bird’s nest approach, using little attributes of different people.”


As if writing and book touring were not enough, Dee is also a part-time contributor to The New York Times and Harpers and is a professor at Columbia University teaching in the School of Fine Arts.