Arthur Nersesian is a third-generation New Yorker of Armenian and Irish descent. He is the author of ten novels, as well as plays and poetry. With his first novel, The Fuck-Up (1997), he established his inimitable blend of grit and humor, East Village naturalism and bohemian satire. It has become an underground classic, selling over 120,000 copies. Several subsequent novels mine the same rich seam; they include Manhattan Loverboy, dogrun (recently adapted for a movie, My Dead Boyfriend), Chinese Takeout, Suicide Casanova and Unlubricated.

Nersesian’s fiction has since taken two distinct paths. Mesopotamia and Gladyss of the Hunt offer his unique take on contemporary crime fiction, while The Swing Voter of Staten Island (2007) and The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (2008) are the first two parts of a five-book series offering a dystopian counterfactual history of New York City (to be published in its entirety in 2020 as The Five Books of (Robert) Moses.