Board Biography: Andrew Solomon

Andrew Solomon
Writer
New York, NY

Andrew Solomon studied at Yale University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1985, and then at Jesus College Cambridge, where he received the top first-class degree in English in his year, the only foreign student ever to be so-honored, as well as the University writing prize. He is now pursuing a PhD at Cambridge in the Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies (psychology), working on the relation between biological and psychosocial models of early attachment between mothers and infants. In 1988, he began his study of Russian artists, which culminated with the publication of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost (Knopf, 1991). He was asked in 1993 to consult with members of the National Security Council on Russian affairs and wrote parts of Clinton’s first Russia speeches; that year he was also named a Contributing Writer of The New York Times Magazine, a position he held until 2001. His first novel, A Stone Boat (Faber, 1994), which tells the story of a man’s shifting identity as he watches his mother battle cancer, was a runner up for the LA Times First Fiction prize and was a national bestseller; it has now been published in 5 languages.

Mr. Solomon’s most recent book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, has won him 14 national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award, and is being published in 24 languages. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It has been on the New York Times bestseller list in both hardback and paperback; it has also been a bestseller in seven foreign countries. The NY Times review described it as “All-encompassing, brave, deeply humane...a book of remarkable depth, breadth and vitality...open-minded, critically informed and poetic all at the same time...fearless, and full of compassion.” Mr. Solomon has lectured on depression around the world, including recent stints at Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress. In 2008, he was awarded the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry for his contributions to the field of mental health. He holds a staff appointment as a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell Medical School (Weill-Cornell Medical College).

He is currently writing a book called Far From the Tree: A Legacy of Love, and Identity which deals with how families accommodate children who are deaf, who are autistic, who are transgender, who are prodigies, who have committed crimes, and so on, for which he has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio. It is an examination of unusual family situations and how they can be invested with love. He is also working on a comic novel.

He has written regularly about gay marriage, including a piece for Newsweek’s inaugural issue, another for Anderson Cooper’s blog, and another for The Advocate. His own marriage to John Habich was written about in the New York Times, the London Sunday Times, Tatler, the Daily Beast, and numerous other publications. The wedding ceremony that he wrote for that occasion has been taught as a sample text at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in a course on privacy and civil rights law. He has endowed the Solomon Summer Research Fellowships at Yale University in Gay and Lesbian Studies, and has lectured within that department. He is also a member of the board of Trans Youth Family Allies (TYFA).

He has joined the board of the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign and of the Depression Center of the University of Michigan, and the Columbia University Medical School (Board of Visitors) and of the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center. Additionally, he serves on the boards of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Alliance for the Arts, the Alex Fund, the William Alanson White Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the World Monuments Fund. He is on the advisory boards of Outward Bound and the Mental Health Policy Forum at Columbia University, is a member of the Asian Art Council of the Guggenheim and the Chairman’s Council of the Metropolitan Museum, and serves on the Conservators’ Council of the New York Public Library. He is a fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University and is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in London and New York and is a dual national.

Last Updated: 10-4-10

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