Background

George Green was born in 1954 in Idaho, United States. Green inherited a love of reading from his father, a newspaper reporter and fiction writer. One of five children, he and his family moved often.

Education

George spent his high school years in Georgia, attending a private school until he dropped out. Later he attended college for a couple of years.

Career

At the beginning of his career, Green lived on odd jobs, ending up in New York City where, during the mid-1970s and into the 1980s he freelanced for the now-defunct Suburbia Today magazine, completed a novel, and wrote poetry. Although he was unable to sell his novel, his verse was published by literary magazines.

Discouraged by his inability to get his novel published, in 1984 Green gave up his literary ambitions, moved to Guatemala, and started a company that produced and exported clothing to the United States.

Yet literature was too compelling for Green to ignore, and by 1991 he had sold his business to a partner. Inspired by a newspaper story, Green wrote the mystery The Caveman’s Valentine, which revolves around the activities of Romulus Ledbetter, a Juilliard School of Music graduate and a one-time mental patient who lives in a cave near Inwood Park in Manhattan. When Ledbetter finds the naked corpse of a former photographer’s model, he decides to investigate.

Green’s second novel, The Juror, which was again inspired by a newspaper story, was a popular success as a book and a motion picture. It tells the story of artist Annie and her son Oliver, whose lives change dramatically when Annie is called to sit on the jury of a mobster on trial. Annie becomes the target of juror intimidation, and rather than going to the police for help, she decides to solve the problem herself. The problem takes the form of a Mafia manipulator named Vincent, who poses as an art dealer, and despite his evil intentions, falls in love with Annie.

In 1997 Green founded The Moth, a non-profit group based in New York City dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. The Moth presents a wide range of theme-based storytelling events across the United States and abroad, often featuring prominent literary and cultural personalities.

In 2009, after a long break, Green published another novel Ravens, which hailed by the LA Times as "a triumphant return".

Achievements

• George Dawes Green is an internationally celebrated author of The Juror, Ravens and The Caveman's Valentine for which he won the Edgar Allan Poe award in 1994. It garnered good reviews and was eventually adapted as a film starring Samuel L. Jackson with a screenplay also by Green. The Juror was an international bestseller in more than twenty languages and was also adapted into a film, starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Green's Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail of London, and many other publications.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Juror 1996
  • The Caveman's Valentine 1994
  • Ravens 2008

Views

Quotations: "When I started it, I wanted to get as far away from literature as possible—I felt my life was being proscribed by books."

"I decided that I wanted to make a living off writing, so it had to be novels. I love structure—I’m devoted to it— and so I have a warm spot for genre writing. There’s nothing to me as exciting as a good detective story."

Interests

• Writers

  James Calemine

• Athletes

  Antoine Montant

• Music & Bands

  McIntosh County Shouters, Willie Nelson, Shovels and Rope, Shotgun Party