Mark Leyner was born in
Jersey City, NJ, to a Jewish family. He is the son of Joel and Muriel (née Chasan) Leyner, who had divorced by 1997. Leyner received a B.A. from
Brandeis University in 1977 and an M.F.A. from
University of Colorado in 1979. He was briefly married to Arleen Portada, before marrying his second wife, Mercedes, and having a daughter, Gabrielle. Leyner employs an intense and unconventional style in his works of
fiction. His stories are generally humorous and absurd, with bizarre juxtapositions of people, places and things reminiscent of a
Mad Lib. Leyner incorporates many medical references throughout his work. In
The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark's father survives a lethal injection at the hands of the New Jersey penal system, and so is freed but must live the remainder of his life in fear of being executed, at New Jersey's discretion, in any situation and regardless of collateral damage. They frequently incorporate elements of
meta-fiction: In the same novel, an adolescent Mark produces a film adaptation of the story of his father's failed execution, although he reads a newspaper review of the movie to the prison's warden, and then dies, before even leaving the prison. At the sentence level, Leyner uses sprawling imagery and an extravagant vocabulary, bordering on
prose poetry. Leyner has also worked as a columnist for
Esquire and
George magazines, and as a writer for the
MTV program
Liquid Television. He also co-wrote and voiced a short-lived series of audio fiction called
Wiretap. Leyner also studied with noted post-modern author
Steve Katz at the University of Colorado-Boulder. During the 1990s, Leyner was a resident of
Hoboken, New Jersey, together with his dog Carmella. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Leyner collaborated with Dr.
Billy Goldberg on three humorous, though fact-based, books on medicine. == Filmography ==