J. Robert Lennon

American writer

John Robert Lennon (born 1970) is an American novelist, short story writer, musician and composer.

Lennon was raised in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. He earned a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (1992) and an M. F. A. (1995) from the University of Montana. He is, as of 2011, an associate professor, and director of the Creative Writing Program, at Cornell University and resides in upstate New York.

Lennon's first novel, The Light of Falling Stars (1997), about the aftermath of a plane crash, was the winner of Barnes & Noble's 1997 Discover Great New Writers Award. His fourth novel, Mailman, was released to critical success in 2003 and concerns a mail carrying protagonist named Albert Lippincott who is clearly losing his mind. The book won praise for its humorous portrayal of the sadness of everyday life. His other books include The Funnies (1999), a comedy about a would be cartoonist; On the Night Plain (2001), a noir western set in the 1940s; and Pieces for the Left Hand: 100 Anecdotes (2005), a collection of 100 very short stories. His novel Happyland is roughly based around the American Girl doll company creator Pleasant Rowland. It was dropped by publisher W. W. Norton and subsequently published in serial by Harper's Magazine. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker. In April 2021, he published both a novel Subdivision and a new collection of short stories, Let Me Think, which was a finalist for The Story Prize. His 2024 novel Hard Girls was recommended under the "whodunit" category of the March 2024 issue of BookPage magazine. Staff reviewer Bruce Tierney wrote that Hard Girls was, "an original, multilayered and quite engrossing thriller".