Michael Lowenthal, an American fiction writer, is the author of four novels, most recently The Paternity Test (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).
His short stories have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Kenyon Review, Tin House, and Esquire.
The Dartmouth Review said that he singlehandedly ruined the graduation ceremony;[6] however, The New York Times reported that this statement earned him a standing ovation.
[8] Lowenthal told The Boston Globe that he wrote Charity Girl because he happened to be reading Susan Sontag's book AIDS and Its Metaphors, and was intrigued by a reference to the quarantining during WWI of American women diagnosed with venereal diseases.
Intrigued, he rapidly discovered that 15,000 young women had been summarily sent to detention centers for the duration, and wrote his first historical novel about such a girl.