Jay McInerney
Bestselling author of the Gen X classic Bright Lights, Big City and a passionate oenophile

Photo credit: David Howells
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About Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney’s status as a bestselling novelist is established, but fans of his novels may not be aware of his long-term interest in wine. McInerney expresses his love of wine as a frequent contributor to the glossy pages of House & Garden magazine. His accounts of visits to vineyards and the wines he has imbibed are witty and enthusiastic in equal measure, but he is by no means a traditional wine critic. McInerney brings a relaxed attitude to wine and has led many wine tastings and lectured to groups of both wine connoisseurs and casual drinkers. His musings on wine have been collected inBacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar, Hedonist in the Cellar, and his latest, The Juice. These columns are a happy combination of his twin passions for writing and for wine and give great advice too!
For those not as familiar with Jay McInerney’s novels, he is the author of Bright Lights, Big City (which he adapted for the screen), Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages, Model Behavior, and The Good Life, which was described by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times as “A real love story . . . with a sympathy and depth new to McInerney’s fiction. . . . [In] The Good Life, the boom years have come to a dead halt with 9/11, an event that rocks even his most jaded hedonists and propels his two central characters into a re-examination of their marriages, their careers and their dreams.” The sequel, Bright, Precious Days was published in August 2016.
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Speaking Topics
Wine Tasting with Jay
Categories: Food + Nutrition Speakers, Literary Fiction Speakers -
Video
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Praise for Jay McInerney
Praise for Bright, Precious Days
Our modern-day Fitzgerald.
— Vanity FairQuietly affecting. . . . Mellow, earnest, almost elegiac.
— The New YorkerIrresistible. . . with an engaging cast of characters acutely aware of how quickly their time is passing. Reading it is a guilty pleasure.
— The San Francisco ChroniclePraise for The Juice
It is a pleasure to see the wine world through a novelist’s playful eyes, and to feel the infectious joy he finds in great wines, places and personalities from around the world.
— Eric Asimov, The New York TimesAs bracing as high-acid Riesling . . . McInerney the novelist, with his eye for detail and smart aleck wit, is never far from the page, [and] he's able to get inside each destination and suss out what makes it interesting.
— The Washington Post Book WorldPraise for Bright Lights, Big City
Bright Lights, Big City is a brilliant and moving work—unique, refreshing, imaginatively powerful and authentically conceived.
— The New York TimesBright Lights, Big City defined, and even determined, the mood of this whole town.
— Vanity FairEach generation needs its Manhattan novel, and many ache to write it. But it was McInerney who succeeded.
— The New York Times Book Review -
Books by Jay McInerney
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Media About Jay McInerney
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Featured Title
Bright, Precious Days
"An art form of sustained intimacy. . . . A portrait of a marriage in full, its strengths and weaknesses, its betrayals and compromises. . . . Endurance, in the end, is McInerney’s theme, for both marriage and city. Battered, bruised, we’re still here, catching our breaths, holding on."
—The New York Times Book Review