Steve Altes

Steve Altes is the author of the comedic graphic novel Geeks & Greeks, set at MIT and inspired by MIT's culture of hacking and Steve's own experiences with hazing.

Known for his humorous essays, Steve's specialty is getting hired into unusual occupations and writing funny accounts of his misadventures. Some escapades he has written about include working as a hand model, a stand-in for Brad Pitt, a stunt man on Die Hard With A Vengeance, a bank robber at the FBI Academy, an aide to President-elect Bill Clinton, and applying to the CIA.

His humor essays have been published in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including the Boston Phoenix, Capital Style, Funny Times, the Los Angeles Times, Penthouse, P.O.V., Salon, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, and The Writer.

He is the author of two humor books, The Little Book of Bad Business Advice (St. Martin's, 1997) and If You Jam the Copier, Bolt (Andrews McMeel, 2001). His work also appears in the humor anthologies, May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor (HarperCollins, 2004) and Joke Express: Instant Delivery of 1,424 Funny Bits from the Best Comedians, (Andrews McMeel, 2006). He has been a commentator for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and a member of Us Weekly magazine's "Fashion Police" (ironic if you knew how he dressed). Steve's career as a humorist actually began in college when he began selling absurd letters to the editor to National Lampoon.

Steve holds three degrees from MIT: a bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering, a master's in Aerospace Engineering, and a master's in Technology and Policy. Steve's thesis on the U.S. space program was the only college thesis in history ever reviewed by The New York Review of Books. He was a co-recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest award for technological achievement, for his work on the Pegasus air-launched space booster.

He is married to acting coach Diana Jellinek and lives outside of Los Angeles, where he is made uncomfortable writing about himself in the third-person.