John Burnham Schwartz grew up in New York City. At Harvard College, he majored in Japanese studies, and upon graduation accepted a position with a prominent Wall Street investment bank, before finally turning the position down after selling his first novel. That book, BICYCLE DAYS, a coming of age story about a young American man in Japan, was published in 1989 on his 24th birthday. It went on to become a critically acclaimed bestseller.

RESERVATION ROAD, his second novel about a family tragedy and its aftermath, published in 1998, was also critically acclaimed and a bestseller, and last fall it was made into a major motion picture based on Schwartz's screenplay. The film starred Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly, and was directed by Terry George.

Schwartz went on to publish CLAIRE MARVEL, a love story set in America and France, and, at the beginning of 2008, THE COMMONER, a novel inspired by the lives of the current empress and crown princess of Japan. Spanning seventy years of modern Japanese history and looking deep into the secret, ancient world of the Japanese Imperial Family, THE COMMONER has won Schwartz the best reviews and sales of his career.

Schwartz's work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a recipient of a Lyndhurst Prize for mastery in the art of fiction, and his journalism has appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, and Vogue.

Since writing the script for "Reservation Road," Schwartz has become an accomplished screenwriter as well as a novelist. His screenplay adaptation of New York Times editor Dana Canedy's memoir "A Journal for Jordan," for Sony Pictures has Denzel Washington attached to star and possibly direct. And he has just finished adapting Nancy Horan's bestselling novel "Loving Frank" (about Frank Lloyd Wright's tragic seven-year love-affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney) for Lionsgate.

Schwartz has taught fiction writing at Harvard, The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Sarah Lawrence College, and he is the literary director of the Sun Valley Writers' Conference, one of the leading literary festivals in the United States.

He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, screenwriter and food writer Aleksandra Crapanzano, and their son.