PAUL ALEXANDER is the editor of the essay collection Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath. He is the author of Rough Magic, a biography of Plath; Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, a national bestseller that was published in ten countries; Death and Disaster: The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race For Andy’s Millions; Salinger: A Biography; Man of the People: The Life of John McCain; The Candidate, a chronicle of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign; and Machiavelli’s Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. He is the author of the Number-1-bestselling Kindle Singles Murdered and Accused. His latest book, Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in the US in February 2024 and by Cannongate in the UK in July 2024.

A former reporter for Time, Alexander has published nonfiction in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Book World, Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Detroit News, The Palm Beach Post, The Dallas Times Herald, The Des Moines Register, The Buffalo News, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New York Observer, New York, The Village Voice, Worth, Crain’s New York, More, Cosmopolitan, Interview, ARTnews, Mirabella, Premiere, Travel & Leisure, Men’s Journal, Best Life, Biography, Out, The Advocate, The Nation, Roll Call, The Hill, Salon, George, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Literary Hub, The Gagosian Quarterly, and Rolling Stone. In Europe, his journalism has appeared in Paris Match, Gente, and The Guardian.

Alexander’s biography of J.D. Salinger is the basis of Shane Salerno’s documentary Salinger, which was released theatrically before appearing on PBS’s American Masters  and Netflix. It is now available on HBO. Alexander wrote Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen, an original screenplay about Kilgallen’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, for Twentieth Century Fox. He is the director of a British revival of Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden and Brothers in Arms, a documentary feature film about John Kerry and Vietnam.

Alexander is the author of the plays Strangers in the Land of Canaan, directed by Rip Torn, and Edge. Developed at The Actors Studio, Edge, the one-woman play about Sylvia Plath which he directed, ran in New York, where it received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination; London; and in other cities, among them Miami and Los Angeles. Edge toured Australia and New Zealand and enjoyed a second run in New York. A production presented by Method Machine ran in Rochester and Florida. A revival of Edge, directed by Melissa Cardello-Linton and starring Andrea Lynn Green, is forthcoming. Alexander has also completed a new play, The Moons of Saturn, a family drama set in the South.

Alexander’s poetry has appeared in Poetry (Chicago), The New Republic, The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Now, Mississippi Review, Bits, Poem, The Louisville Review, The Vanderbilt Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Slow Loris Reader, The Hiram Poetry Review, The Spoon River Quarterly, The Black Warrior Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Connecticut River Review, Deep South, Cold Creek Review, The West Texas Literary Review, Allegro, Canada Quarterly, Plath Profiles, Chelsea Station, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Bennington Review, The James Dickey Review, among others. Honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize.

Alexander holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from The University of Alabama and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Memberships include PEN American Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, the Academy of American Poets, and the Playwrights and Directors Unit of The Actors Studio. In the fall of 2002, he was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In January 2013, he appeared at the Key West Literary Seminar as part of the Writers on Writers series. He has taught at the University of Houston, Hofstra University, Long Island University, The New School, St. John’s University, Fordham University, and Medgar Evers College.  He is on the faculty at Hunter College in New York City.