[1] D'Amato received a BA from Yale University and an MA from the CUNY Graduate Center.
[2] At Yale, D'Amato studied with John Hollander, Erwin Hauer, and William Bailey.
At the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, he studied with Robert Pincus-Witten.
[5] D'Amato's 1992 novel, Beauty, a thriller (with horror elements) about cosmetic surgery, was translated into several languages.
[5][6] His next novel, titled In the Courts of the Sun, is the first book of The Sacrifice Game trilogy and was published by Dutton in 2009.