Leonard Michaels (January 2, 1933 – May 10, 2003) was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays, and a Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

It is story-like comedy that simultaneously attacks and celebrates the absurdities of men as they gather in a kind of urban support group.

In 1986, the novel was made into a film, directed by Peter Medak, with the screenplay by Michaels, and starring Roy Scheider, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Frank Langella.

He took part in anti-Vietnam war protests in the San Francisco Bay area,[8] although he also accepted a description of himself as an 'unpolitical man'.

[9] His son Jesse Michaels (from his second marriage) was the vocalist and primary lyricist in the seminal underground punk rock band Operation Ivy in the late 1980s