The Plain Wrapper Press Redux Team

FREDERIC TUTEN grew up in the Bronx. At fifteen, he dropped out of High School to become a painter and live in Paris. He took odd jobs and studied briefly at the Art Students League, and eventually went back to school, eventually earning a Ph.D. in early 19th-century American Literature from New York University.

Tuten’s short stories, art and film criticism have appeared in ArtForum, The New York Times, Vogue, Conjunctions, Granta and Harpers. In addition, he has written essays and fiction for artists’ catalogues including those of Ross Bleckner, John Baldessari, Eric Fischl, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, David Salle and Roy Lichtenstein. He has published five novels: The Adventures of Mao on the Long March, Tallien: A Brief Romance, Tintin in the New World, Van Gogh’s Bad Café, and The Green Hour. Self Portraits: Fictions is his book of short stories, and most recently, he published a memoir, My Young Life. His books of short stories, The Bar at Twilight and On a Terrace in Tangier, appeared in the summer of 2023.

His fiction has been translated into nine languages.

Tuten received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction and was given the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been awarded three Pushcart Prizes and one O. Henry Prize.

He had his first solo show of his drawings at the Planthouse Gallery in New York on April 4, 2019.

Tuten speaks about his painting.