Ben Greenman (born September 28, 1969) is a novelist, magazine journalist, and publishing executive who has written more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books, including collaborations with pop-music artists like Questlove, George Clinton, Brian Wilson, Gene Simmons, and others. His books have been translated into many other languages, including Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, and more. From 2000 to 2014, he was an editor at The New Yorker. He now serves as executive editor of Auwa Books, an imprint founded by Questlove in collaboration with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Greenman was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Richard Greenman, an academic physician, and Bernadine Heller-Greenman, an art history professor. He has two younger brothers, Aaron and Josh. He lived briefly in Mountain View, California, and was raised in Miami, where he attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School, and then, after graduating in 1986, Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1990. After working at Miami New Times, Greenman enrolled in a Ph.D. program in literature at Northwestern University but left after earning his Master's Degree. He moved to New York City and worked for a variety of book packagers, publishers, and magazines, including Michael Wolff & Company and Yahoo! Internet Life. In 2000, he went to work at The New Yorker, where he was an editor until 2014.
In 2001 McSweeneys published Greenman's debut, Superbad, a collection of humor pieces and serious short fiction that included several satirical musicals. It has the same title as, but not the same contents as, the popular teen comedy; Greenman engaged in a fake feud with Seth Rogen over the title. The book's cover art was a painting by the artist Mark Tansey.[1] Greenman's next book, Superworse, the Novel: A Remix of Superbad, was published in 2004 by Soft Skull, an independent Brooklyn publisher. It refashioned the book into a novel that was overseen and edited by a man named Laurence Once. Kirkus called it "something extraordinary."[2]
In 2007, Macadam/Cage published Greenman's second collection of stories. It was selected by Barnes & Noble for its Discover Great Writers series, and included both comic work and more serious stories like "In the Air Room," which fictionalized the famous controversy over James McNeill Whistler and the Peacock Room.[3] Elizabeth Gold, writing on SFGate, said that "the best of the stories in this collection are more than funny."[4]
In 2008, Hotel St. George press released a handmade and letterpress-printed edition of Greenman's book Correspondences that included an intricate book casing that unfolded to reveal three accordion books and a postcard. The project was reviewed favorably by the Los Angeles Times[5] and Time Out.[6]
In 2009, Melville House published Greenman's second novel, which was a fictionalized biography of a funk-rock star based loosely on Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and others. The funk-rock star Swamp Dogg recorded a theme song for the book.[7] Later in 2009, Greenman signed with HarperCollins: the first book announced was What He's Poised To Do, an expanded paperback based on the material from Correspondences. The book was praised by Steve Almond in the Los Angeles Times.[8]
In 2010, Greenman adapted the short stories of the Russian master Anton Chekhov, updating them by replacing their characters with modern celebrities. Pop Matters, praising the collection, said "the very, very best of these stories make us weep."[9]
Greenman's novel, The Slippage, was published by Harper Perennial in 2013. The book included a character who was a chart artist and whose work consisted of meta-charts; Greenman created a number of them and posted them at ILoveCharts.com and McSweeneys, among other places. The New York Times praised the novel as "fluid and commanding."[10]
In the summer of 2016, Little A published Emotional Rescue, a collection of essays about pop music and relationships.[11][self-published source?]
Greenman has also collaborated on celebrity memoirs. His most frequent collaborator has been Questlove; he co-wrote the hip-hop memoir Mo Meta Blues, a food-themed book called Something to Food About, a book about creativity and innovation called Creative Quest, and a conceptual cookbook called Mixtape Potluck.[12] In addition, he wrote memoirs with the funk musician George Clinton[13] and Brian Wilson, co-founder of the Beach Boys, as well as with the actress Mariel Hemingway,[14] Gene Simmons of KISS,[15] and Simon Cowell of American Idol. The Questlove and Wilson books were best-sellers.[16][17]
Greenman's journalism and short fiction have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker,[18] where he worked as an editor from 2000 to 2014, the Paris Review,[19] Zoetrope: All-Story.[20] He has also moderated many events, including Literary Death Match, Literary Upstart, and the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Ceremony.[21]
Greenman is also the executive editor at AUWA Books, a publishing imprint launched by Questlove in 2023.
Greenman is married to art director Gail Ghezzi and has two children: Daniel and Jakob (6'2"), both of whom were born when the couple lived in Brooklyn. The family currently lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
