About Scott Raab

Scott Raab was born in Cleveland in 1952 and grew up in Cleveland and Los Angeles. He graduated from Cleveland State University in 1983, after much dicking around, and from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 1986.

He has been a Writer at Large at Esquire magazine since 1997, and at GQ from 1992-1997. His writing has been anthologized frequently, appearing in both Best American Sports Writing and Best Food Writing, but he never has won an award -- not even a minor award. (He would like to blame anti-Semitism for this ongoing slight, but he won't.)

Real Hollywood Stories is his first book. Its original title, Angry Jew Goes To Hollywood, gave his publisher the willies. They were going to go with XXL Hollywood instead, but the publisher worried that XXL might lead those readers familiar with Roman numerals to feel short-changed, since the book contains a mere twenty stories. Raab then proposed Naked Hollywood Stories, but too late to change the cover design. He finally suggested that the publisher just call it Book.

In July, Raab starts a new blog on esquire.com called Fat Dad, about an obese 55-year-old guy with a huge penis and an 8-year-old son. It will be straight autobiography -- except for the stuff about the huge penis.