Michael Thomas

Novelist, Author of Man Gone Down
Winner of 2009 IMPAC Dublin Award

"What a novel, and what a writer. Michael Thomas is brilliant, and Man Gone Down is riveting. Every page vibrates with love and anger and hope." —Elizabeth Gaffney, author of Metropolis

“The narrator’s hard-bitten realism and Thomas’s blues-dirge-y storytelling instincts keep the narrative thrumming…. [A] jazzy, complicated literary work.” —People

Michael Thomas is the author of Man Gone Down (Grove/Atlantic), a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel that follows a 35-year-old African-American man, broke and estranged from his white wife and three children, who has four days to keep his family afloat and reclaim his stake in the American Dream. Donna Seaman wrote, "Thomas has written a rhapsodic and piercing post-9/11 lament over aggression, greed, and racism, and a ravishing blues for the soul's unending loneliness." Man Gone Down received a stellar review on the cover of the New York Times Book Review: "Thomas knows how the odds are stacked in America. He knows the unlikelihood of successful black fatherhood. He knows that things are set up to keep the Other poor and the poor in their place. More than anything else, he knows how little but also—fortunately—how much it can take to bring a man down. 

The book was selected as one of the Times Book Review's top five novels of the year, as well as a New York Times Notable Book, and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. In June 2009, Thomas was awarded the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative literary prizes in the world—his novel was selected from 145 books nominated by libraries around the globe, of which four were from the US. The New York Times writes, "The IMPAC Dublin award is often described as 'the largest and most international' literary prize in the world after the Nobel."

Thomas received his BA from Hunter College and his MFA from Warren Wilson College. Currently, he a full-time professor of English at Hunter College. Born and raised in Boston, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children. In 2011, Thomas will publish a memoir, The Broken King, about four generations of men in his family. An eloquent and charismatic speaker, Thomas easily addresses a wide variety of topics.

IMPAC Judges Citation:
“We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas’ masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time. He lingers because this extraordinary novel comes to us from a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight. Tuned urgently to the way we live now, the winner of the International Dublin IMPAC Prize 2009 is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth.”

NY Times Op-Ed, "I Was Not Michael Jackson" by Michael Thomas