Brian D'Amato

American novelist

Brian D'Amato is an American author and sculptor.

When he was young, his father taught at Wellesley College. During this time, Hillary Clinton (at the time, named Hillary Rodham), a student at the college, babysat him. D'Amato went to high school at New Trier High School in the suburbs of Chicago. At Yale, D'Amato studied with John Hollander, Erwin Hauer, and William Bailey. At the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, he studied with Robert Pincus Witten. In the 1990s, D'Amato showed sculptures and installations at galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. He has written for magazines, including Harper's Bazaar, Index Magazine, Vogue, Flash Art, and Artforum, and he has taught art and art history at the City University of New York, Ohio State University, and Yale University. D'Amato's 1992 novel, Beauty, a thriller (with horror elements) about cosmetic surgery, was translated into several languages. His next novel, titled In the Courts of the Sun, is the first book of The Sacrifice Game trilogy and was published by Dutton in 2009. New American Library published a trade paperback edition in 2009. The second book in the trilogy, The Sacrifice Game, was published by Dutton 2012. Beauty is being republished by Little, Brown and Company's Mulholland Classics line in 2013. D'Amato's work is often associated with the genres of Biopunk, Transhumanism in fiction, and Posthumanism. D'Amato is the son of Northwestern Law professor Anthony D'Amato and mystery novelist Barbara D'Amato.