CHUCK PALAHNIUK, American writer, born; an American satirical novelist and freelance journalist of Ukrainian ancestry born in Pasco, Washington. The press release for his book, Rant, states he is now living in Vancouver, Washington. He is best known for the award-winning novel  Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher. He has one of the largest centralized followings of any author on the Internet, based around his official website. By his account, he started writing while attending writer’s workshops, hosted by Tom Spanbauer (The Man Who Fell in Love With The Moon), which he attended to meet new friends. Spanbauer largely inspired Palahniuk’s minimalistic writing style.

His first book, Insomnia: If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Already, was never published due to his disappointment with the story (though a small part of it would be salvaged for use in Fight Club). When he attempted to publish his next novel, Invisible Monsters, publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on his most famous novel, Fight Club, which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in his spare time while working for Freightliner. After initially publishing it as a  short story (which would become chapter 6 of the novel) in the 1995 compilation Pursuit of Happiness, Palahniuk expanded it into a full novel, which – contrary to his expectations – the publisher was willing to publish.

 In September 2003, Palahniuk was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly’s Karen Valby. During the interview, Palahniuk in confidence mentioned information pertaining to his partner. While it had been previously believed by many that he was married to a woman (some members of the press had claimed he had a wife), Palahniuk had in fact been living with his boyfriend. Some time later, Palahniuk believed that Valby was going to print this information in her article, without his consent. In response, he put an angry audio recording of himself on his web site, not only revealing that he is gay, but also making negative comments about Valby and a member of her family.

However, Palahniuk’s fears turned out to be ungrounded, and Valby’s article did not reveal anything about his personal life outside of the fact that he is unmarried. The recording was later removed from the website, making some fans believe that Palahniuk is embarrassed by his homosexuality. According to Dennis Widmyer, the site’s webmaster, the recording was not removed because of the statements regarding his sexuality, but because of the statements about Valby. Palahniuk would later post a new recording to his site, asking his fans not to overreact to these events. He also apologized for his behavior, claiming that he wished he had not recorded the message.