Jay McInerney was born in 1955 in Hartford, Conn. and earned his B.A from Williams College in 1976. He did postgraduate study at Syracuse University, and was a Princeton in Asia fellow in 1977. McInerney's career includes stints as a newspaper reporter, a textbook editor, and a fact checker for the New Yorker magazine. His writing has appeared in a variety of periodicals including Paris Review, Vogue, and Atlantic Monthly. His books include "Model Behavior," "The Last of the Savages," and "Bright Lights, Big City."