Steve Kluger is an author and playwright from Baltimore, Maryland, who grew up with only two heroes: Tom Seaver and Ethel Merman. Few were able to grasp the concept. A veteran of Casablanca and a graduate of The Graduate, He’s written extensively on subjects as far ranging as World War II, rock and roll, and the Titanic, and as close to the heart as baseball and the Boston Red Sox (which frequently have nothing to do with one another). Doubtless due to the fact that he’s a card-carrying Baby Boomer whose entire existence was shaped by the lyrics to Abbey Road, Workingman’s Dead, and Annie Get Your Gun (his first spoken words, in fact, were actually cribbed from The Pajama Game), he’s also pursued a somewhat weird path as a civil rights advocate, campaigning for a “Save Fenway Park” initiative (which qualifies as a civil right if you're a Red Sox fan), counseling gay teenagers, and—on behalf of Japanese American internment redress—lobbying the Department of the Interior to restore the baseball diamond at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Meanwhile, he’s donated much of his spare time to organizations such as Lambda Legal, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and Models of Pride, and gives the rest of it to his nephews and nieces, Bridgette, Emily, Audrey, Elisa, Noah, Paloma, Logan, Evan and Robbie—the nine kids who own his heart.
His novels include Changing Pitches, Last Days of Summer, Almost Like Being in Love, and My Most Excellent Year. For the stage, he’s written Bullpen, a Boston Red Sox comedy (not a redundancy); Cafe ’50s, a “medium-rare comedy with a shake;” Pilots of the Purple Twilight, a comedy-drama set on board the Titanic (before it became trendy); and the romantic comedy After Dark. He is currently working with director Jeff Calhoun on a musical adaptation of Last Days of Summer, for which he wrote the libretto and lyrics to music by Jason Howland.
Steve has also published a World War II history entitled Yank, and is a regular contributor to newspapers such as USA Today and the Boston Globe.