Andrew Solomon was born in New York City on October 30, 1963. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University and a Master's degree in English at Jesus College, Cambridge. He has written for numerous publications including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He has written several non-fiction books including The Irony Tower, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award. He also wrote the novel A Stone Boat. He is a lecturer in psychiatry at Cornell University and special advisor on LGBT affairs to the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry.