Michael Chabon (pron. SHAY-bon) (born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation," according to the The Virginia Quarterly Review. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when Chabon was 25 and catapulted him to literary celebrity.

He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a critically acclaimed novel that The New York Review of Books called his magnum opus; it received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. His most recent novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 to enthusiastic reviews and won the Hugo, Sidewise, and Nebula awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of that same year.

His work is characterized by complex language, frequent use of metaphor, and an extensive vocabulary, along with numerous recurring themes, including nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and issues of Jewish identity. He often includes gay, bisexual, and Jewish characters in his work. Since the late 1990s, Chabon has written in an increasingly diverse series of styles for varied outlets; he is a notable defender of the merits of genre fiction and plot-driven fiction, and, along with novels, he has published screenplays, children's books, comics, and newspaper serials.

Michael Chabon (pronounced, in his words, "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi", i.e., [ˈʃeɪˌbɑn]) was born in Washington, D.C., to Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, also a lawyer. He was raised in a Jewish family. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment.

Featuring Sherlock Holmes, the story received an A, and Chabon recalled, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do. I can do this.' And I never had any second thoughts or doubts." His parents divorced when Chabon was eleven, and he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Maryland.

Columbia, where Chabon lived nine months of the year with his mother, was "a progressive planned living community in which racial, economic, and religious diversity were actively fostered."

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