Gore Vidal was born in 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was nineteen years old and serving in the Army, appeared in the spring of 1946. Since then he has written twenty-three novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over two hundred essays, and a memoir.Jay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. Among his works of fiction and criticism are The Last Station, John Steinbeck, and Benjamin's Crossing. Parini is Gore Vidal's literary executor and a regular contributor to various journals and newspapers, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Guardian (U.K.). In 1976, he cofounded New England Review, and he has taught at Middlebury College since 1982. He lives in Vermont.
