Patrick deWitt

Born on Vancouver Island, Canada in 1975, Patrick DeWitt dropped out of high school and headed south, landing in Los Angeles and making ends meet as a bartender while he wrote his first novel, Ablutions: Notes for a Novel. Published in 2009, it tells the story of a young bartender who wants to write a novel using the patrons of his bar as his inspiration. The book met with positive reviews. Fed up with introspection, DeWitt fled Los Angeles and went to Portland, Oregon, where he began writing his second novel. Although he had a couple of false starts, he managed to translate one of them in to the screenplay for the film "Terri" (2011), starring John C. Reilly as a vice-principal who takes an interest in an overweight teen. The false starts finally gave way, and DeWitt's second novel The Sisters Brothers was published in 2011. A darkly comic western, the book garnered rave reviews and was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. His follow up was less roundly approved, but again, a seriocomedy set in a fictional past. Published in 2015, Undermajordomo Minor took a skewed look at fairy tales, through the eyes of a young assistant to a majordomo, in charge of running a foreboding castle. 2018 saw the release of the lauded big screen adaptation of "The Sisters Brothers" (2018) starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as the titular brothers, as well as the publication of DeWitt's contemporary novel French Exit, which follows the trials of a wealthy mother and son who flee New York City for Paris when then realize they have been left destitute by their dead husband/father.