William J. Mann is an American novelist, biographer, and Hollywood historian[1] best known for his 2006 biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn. Kate was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2006 by The New York Times.[2]
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Mann was born in Connecticut and, after working briefly as a Capitol Hill aide, received his Master's degree at Wesleyan University.
He worked as a journalist at Metroline magazine, New England's oldest gay publication, from 1992 to 1995. Mann published his first novel, The Men From the Boys, in 1997, and continued with a series of books set in Provincetown, although he has also set his fiction in Palm Springs and Los Angeles. In addition, Mann has written the nonfiction books Wisecracker (1998), a biography of film star William Haines, for which he won the Lambda Literary Award,[3] Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood (2001), and Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger (2005).[4]
Mann's most recent biography is How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. "Reading this life is like gorging on a chocolate sundae", Publishers Weekly wrote of the book.[5] In 2009 Mann also published a novel, Object of Desire.