Neal Pollack – The Greatest Living American Writer
About Neal
Neal Pollack has written eleven bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction that have been published in multiple languages around the world. A 1992 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School Of Journalism, Pollack spent seven years as a staff writer at the Chicago Reader. In 2000, he published his first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, as the inaugural volume in Dave Eggers’ McSweeneys book imprint, and started satirically calling himself The Greatest Living American Writer.
Believing his own press, Pollack quit his job and embarked on a successful freelance career. His articles, satire, and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, GQ, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Slate, Salon, The New Republic, The Nation, Road and Track, Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, and pretty much every other American publication except for The New Yorker. Pollack has since been a columnist for Vanity Fair, The New York Press, Nerve.com, Epicurious, Parents.com, and other publications which no longer exist. He’s contributed short stories and serialized crime fiction to numerous anthologies, and has, among other projects, written a bestselling detective series set in the L.A. yoga scene. His latest book, Pothead, discusses his recovery from marijuana addiction.
Pollack is also the host, with his 14-year-old son Elijah, of Extra Credit, a “Channel” on Audible.com. Extra Credit is a documentary-style series where Pollack tries to teach Elijah dubious lessons that he won’t get in school. The show debuted in January 2016, and has been renewed for a second season. Pollack’s novels are all also available in audio editions. He has been a guest on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Dennis Miller Show, Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld, and NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and was featured on an early episode of This American Life.
Pollack recorded a disastrous but entertaining album, Never Mind The Pollacks, with his band, The Neal Pollack Invasion, which was recently re-released on vinyl by Chicken Ranch Records, and also recorded a spoken-word album on Bloodshot Records, featuring Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and Kelly Hogan. The Neal Pollack Invasion played South By Southwest many times, and Pollack has performed his spoken-word act at Bumbershoot and other cultural festivals around the world, playing on bills with David Byrne, They Might Be Giants, Mike Watt, M. Doughty, John Doe, and many others.
In 2010, Pollack completed a 200-hour Ashtanga yoga immersion at Richard Freeman’s Yoga Workshop in Boulder, Colorado. He practices yoga every day, no matter what. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, the painter Regina Allen and their teenage son, Elijah. Pollack loves cheese, marijuana, Boston Terriers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, classic cinema and you.