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Alex Gilvarry was born in Staten Island, New York, in 1981. He is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, winner of the Hornblower Award for First Fiction (from the New York Society Library), Best New Voice by Bookspan, and selected by the New York Times as an Editor's Choice. He's a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 nominee and he has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center and the Normal Mailer Center. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Boston Globe, NPR's All Things Considered, and many other publications. His second novel, Eastman Was Here, was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award. He is a professor of creative writing at Monmouth University where he teaches fiction.
With his second book, Gilvarry establishes himself as a writer who defies expectation, convention and categorization. Eastman Was Here is a dark, riotously funny and audacious exploration of the sacred and the profane--and pretty much everything in between. --T a Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife Alex Gilvarry has not so much reimagined Norman Mailer as he has channeled him. Eastman Was Here is a wildly entertaining book, intoxicatingly written and deceptively profound in its insights into the nature of celebrity, country, marriage, war and the pitfalls of being a writer. If Mailer had lived to read this novel, he'd have been jealous. --Said Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free What if a down-but-not-dead literary lion went to war? Eastman Was Here seeks out that question and so much more. Part tribute and part throwback, it howls with dark comic energy and brings real vibrancy to two staples of the American imagination, 1970s New York and the Vietnam War. In Alex Gilvarry's masterful hands, the character of Eastman will both delight and horrify readers, something his real-life inspirations would no doubt appreciate. This is a wild joyride of a book and one of 2017's best novels. --Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood Eastman Was Here is a wry throwback of a novel that, though it's set in the past, feels relevant and new. In the tradition of satirists like John Kennedy O'Toole and Kurt Vonnegut, Alex Gilvarry sends up the bad old days of '70s-era hypermasculinity and misogyny, paints a vivid picture of Saigon during the War, and introduces us to an unforgettable anti-hero: the enraging, absurd, hilarious Eastman. Despite its satirical tone, there is real heart in this book, and I found myself incredibly moved by its final act. --Liz Moore, author of Heft and The Unseen World I can't imagine anything smarter or more exuberant than this novel. You want to smack Eastman on the head every couple of pages, but you never want to part with him! --Lara Vapnyar, author of Still Here and There are Jews in My House Praise for From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant The deepest intelligence is poetic, incisive, and inordinately funny. Heads up, folks. Alex Gilvarry just walked through the door. --Colum McCann It's rare for a novel to tread so fearlessly into the political and yet to emerge so deeply funny and humane. --Gary Shteyngart Lively...hilarious...Gilvarry's whirligig of a book...draws some striking parallels between the way we mythologize stars and the way we look at terrorists. --John Freeman, The Boston Globe Delicious . . . A left-handed love letter to America. --Daniel Asa Rose, The New York Times Book Review Original, smart, and incisive . . . Part manifesto, part immigrant love story, part satire, part tragedy . . . [and] eminently readable. --Roxane Gay, The Rumpus
