Bret Easton Ellis

Passions

Vocation

Family

American writer of "American Psycho" fame. His first novel, "Less than Zero" was published in 1985 while he was still a student at Bennington College, with his next novel published in 1987, "The Rules of Attraction." His publisher Simon and Schuster, cancelled publication of "American Psycho" in the fall of 1990, just before the book was released, citing pressure from the parent company Gulf & Western. In 1991, however, Alfred A. Knopf published it. After releasing a collection of short stories, Ellis's first novel in eight years, "GLAMORAMA," was published in January 1999. His controversial novels include graphic violence and the passive characters are often devoid of morals. After the publication of "American Psycho," with its shocking and horrifying content, Ellis received death threats. In 2005, "Lunar Park" was published, about a novelist named Bret Easton Ellis. Though fictional, the character has written the same novels as his namesake author. Ellis says the resemblance continues--he had a difficult, angry alcoholic father and he dates both men and women. "I'm a weird person. I'm not normal. Do you think the guy who wrote these books, do you think that's, like, conducive to normal behavior?" In a 2010 interview, Ellis said he had an "indeterminate sexuality," that "any other interviewer out there will get a different answer and it just depends on the mood I am in." In a 2012 op-ed for The Daily Beast, while apologizing for a series of controversial tweets, Ellis came out as a gay man. Link to Wikipedia biography