Books Written by Fran Lebowitz

Four: the essay collections Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981), The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994), which combines the two, and the children’s book Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas (1994).

Metropolitan Life (1978), Social Studies (1981), The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994) and Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas (1994).

With The Fran Lebowitz Reader, because it contains both of her essay collections. If you can only find one of them, start with Metropolitan Life, her debut.

Metropolitan Life (1978), her first collection of comic essays, which became a New York Times bestseller and established her as a humorist.

No. She has worked on the novel Exterior Signs of Wealth since about 1981, reportedly with a large advance from Random House, and it has not been published. A second unfinished book, Progress, was excerpted in Vanity Fair in 2004.

She has had a famously long writer’s block. Her editor has blamed “an excessive reverence for the written word”. She has kept working as a Vanity Fair contributor, a speaker and a television guest.

Public Speaking (2010), directed by Martin Scorsese for HBO, and Pretend It’s a City (2021), a seven-part Netflix series in which Scorsese talks with her about New York. She is also credited as a producer on the series.

Yes. She played Judge Janice Goldberg in twelve episodes of Law & Order between 2001 and 2007, and she appeared as a judge in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

Yes. She was born on 27 October 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey, and lives in New York, where she still tours as a speaker.

In May 2019, on Real Time with Bill Maher, she joked that Donald Trump should suffer the fate of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. She later withdrew the remark, saying she did not mean it and regretted saying it.

An American writer, public speaker and cultural critic from New York, born in 1950. She is known for her sardonic commentary on city life, her two essay collections Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981), and the Martin Scorsese films Public Speaking (2010) and Pretend It's a City (2021).

She was born on 27 October 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey, so she turned 76 on 27 October 2026.

No. She has never married. She is openly gay and has spoken about finding romantic relationships difficult; in 2016 she said, "I'm a horrible girlfriend. I always was."

There is no known family connection. The names are spelled differently, Lebowitz and Leibovitz. Fran grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, the daughter of Ruth and Harold Lebowitz, who ran a furniture store.

In New York City. She moved there from New Jersey and at 20 rented a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. New York is the subject of almost everything she writes and says, including Pretend It's a City.

Yes. She appears as herself in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. She has also played judges on screen: Judge Janice Goldberg in Law & Order (2001–2007) and a judge in Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

Yes. They met in 1978 and stayed close friends until Morrison's death in 2019. In a 2020 clip for PBS American Masters, Lebowitz said, "I have always sought advice from Toni."

Not closely. She wrote film criticism for Warhol's Interview magazine from 1972, starting with the column "The Best of the Worst", but she never became close friends with Warhol himself.

No. She appears there as a speaker: Carnegie Hall's calendar listed an evening with Fran Lebowitz on 12 December 2025.

She is known as a heavy smoker, which she has been since the age of 12, and as an outspoken defender of smokers' rights. She also famously has no cellphone, computer or typewriter.