David Leavitt

Leavitt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Harold and Gloria Leavitt. Harold was a professor who taught at Stanford University and Gloria was a political activist. Leavitt graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English in 1983. After the success of Family Dancing, David spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in Semproniano in Tuscany with his partner. He has also taught at Princeton University.

In 1993, Leavitt was sued over the publication of his novel While England Sleeps by the English poet Stephen Spender, who accused him of using elements of Spender's memoir World Within World in the novel, and brought suit against Leavitt for copyright infringement. Viking-Penguin, Leavitt's publisher at the time, withdrew the book. In 1995, Houghton Mifflin published a revised version of While England Sleeps with a preface by the author addressing the novel's controversy.

In 2000, Leavitt moved to Gainesville, Florida and became a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Florida as well as the founder and editor of the literary journal Subtropics. Leavitt, who is openly gay, has frequently explored gay issues in his works. As a teenager, he was frequently frightened by gay novels that placed emphasis on the ideal male body. He found this theme, and its suggestion that homoerotic fulfillment was reserved for the exceptionally beautiful young men, to be intrusive. His writing explores universal themes such as complex family relationships, as well as class and sex exploitation. Illness and death are also recurrent themes in his work, inspired by his experience with his mother's cancer diagnosis and eventual death when he was growing up.