Dennis Lehane is an Award-winning author and the New York Times bestseller. He has written award winning novels including Mystic River, which was made into a six Academy Award-winning film in 2003. The film won Oscars in two of the six categories within which it had been nominated, including awards for its screenplay and best film.
The film is about a childhood tragedy, that overshadowed the lives of three men and are reunited by circumstance when one loses a daughter.
Mystic River was directed and co-produced by Academy Award-winning actor, Clint Eastwood, starring two time Academy award-winning actor Sean Penn, Academy Award-winning actor, Tim Robbins and two time Golden Globe nominee, Kevin Bacon. The novel itself was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystère de la Critique.
Mr. Lehane’s other novel, Gone, Baby, Gone was also adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. Gone, Baby, Gone is a 2007 crime drama/mystery film directed by Ben Affleck and starring Casey Affleck. The plot centers on two private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, hunting for an abducted four-year-old girl from the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.
On October 22, 2007 Paramount Pictures announced that they had optioned Shutter Island with Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese and starring three time Oscar nominee, Leonardo DiCaprio playing U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, "who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island. The movie Shutter Island is slated to be released on February 19, 2010.
Dennis Lehane joined the writing staff of the HBO drama series The Wire in 2004. He was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the fifth season.
He wrote and directed an independent film called Neighborhoods in the mid 1990s. The film was said to be similar to Good Will Hunting given its setting in Boston's working class areas like Southie which is South Boston and Dorchester, even though production ended in 1996, more than a year before Good Will Hunting.
Dennis Lehane, is the author of nine novels: A Drink Before The War (July 1996), Darkness, Takes My Hand (July 1997) Sacred (July 1998,), Gone, Baby, Gone (April 1999), Prayers For Rain (May 2000), Mystic River (January 2001), Shutter Island (April 2004), Coronado (September 2006),The Given Day (September 2008)
He was born August 4, 1965 and reared in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and continues to live in the Boston area, which provides the setting for most of his books.
He is a graduate of Boston College High School (a Boston Jesuit prep school), Eckerd College (where he found his passion for writing), and the graduate program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
He was previously married to Sheila, an advocate for the elderly for the city of Boston. He and his current wife, Dr. Angela Bernardo reside in Florida with their baby girl Gianna Malia.
Photo of Dennis Lehane by Ulf Andersen
To learn more about Dennis Lehane, please visit his website
To purchase his books, please visit AMAZON and Barnes & Noble
