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James Kaplan (born 1951) is an American novelist, journalist, and biographer. He was born in New York City and grew up in rural Pennsylvania and suburban New Jersey. He attended New York University and graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in studio art. After graduation, he studied painting at the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village.

In the mid 1970s, he worked as a typist at The New Yorker Magazine, where he came under the tutelage of the writer and editor William Maxwell. In the late 70s and early 80s he published a number of short stories in The New Yorker. In the mid 80s he worked for several years as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers. Since the late 1980s, he has been a prolific writer of magazine profiles for Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and The New Yorker, among others.

He is the author of the following books, among others:

• Frank: The Voice (2010)
• Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia (1999) (held in almost 700 libraries according to WorldCat), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year
• The Airport: Terminal Nights and Runway Days at John F. Kennedy International (1994)
• Pearl's Progress (1989)

He is the co-author of the following biographies:

• With Jerry Lewis, a memoir of Lewis's relationship with Dean Martin, Dean & Me (A Love Story) (2005) held in over 1300 libraries according to WorldCat
• With John McEnroe, You Cannot Be Serious (2002) (held in over 1400 libraries according to WorldCat

Kaplan's fiction has been compared to that of John Updike and J.D. Salinger. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories. He has appeared as a guest on Charlie Rose.

Kaplan lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York with his wife and three sons.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "James Kaplan", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0