Sam Wasson

New York Times bestselling author of 5th Avenue, 5AM (HarperCollins) and Fosse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – now an FX limited series)

Biographer, Film Historian

Sam Wasson is the bestselling author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, which became a New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller, and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly, among other publications.

Wasson’s Fosse won the Los Angeles Book Festival’s Prize for Best Biography of the Year, The George Freedley Grand Jury Prize, and was shortlisted for The Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing.

Sam has served as a consultant for The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA Film, and is a visiting professor of Film at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Wasson has appeared globally, from the 92nd Street Y in New York to Toronto’s Bell Lightbox Theater to the Rome International Film Festival, and has been a featured guest on CNN, BBC, Fox, ABC, and NPR.

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Books

Praise for Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.

The New York Times Bestseller, Harper, June 22, 2010

“A bonbon of a book… As well tailored as the little black dress the movie made famous.”

Praise for Fosse

Now an FX Limited Series, Harper Perennial, November 4, 2014

“Scintillating… There’s an enormous amount of scholarship here, yet the story never drags, so adroitly does [Wasson] blend his material into a fluent narrative around evocative scenes where character emerges novelistically.”

Praise for Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Artby Sam Wasson

2017 George Freedley Memorial Award Finalist, Harper, December 5, 2017

““With Saturday Night Live looming ever larger in the pop culture landscape, it’s time for a history of improv comedy. Wasson delivers, moving nimbly from improv’s origins in 1950s Chicago to movies like Caddyshack and TV shows like The Colbert Report.”