Michael Ventura

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Michael Ventura (b. 31 October 1945) is an American novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and cultural critic.

He is best known for his long-running column, "Letters at 3 A.M.", which first appeared in L.A. Weekly in the early 1980s and now appears biweekly in the Austin Chronicle. He has published three novels: Night Time Losing Time (1989), The Zoo Where You're Fed to God (1994), and The Death of Frank Sinatra (1996). He is currently completing another novel, about Miriam of Magdala, an excerpt from which was published in the third issue of the CalArts literary journal Black Clock in 2005. He is the author of two essay collections, Shadow-Dancing in the U.S.A. (1985) (out of print) and Letters at 3 A.M.: Reports on Endarkenment (1994). With psychologist James Hillman, Ventura co-authored the 1992 bestseller We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - And the World's Getting Worse.

He appears as a fictional character in Steve Erickson's 1996 novel, Amnesiascope.

He wrote the screenplay for "Echo Park", among other movies.