Edison Price "Ned" Vizzini (born April 4, 1981) is an American writer who is the author of books for young adults. He is best known for his novel, Be More Chill. He has been a columnist for the New York Press, since his teens.
Vizzini grew up primarily in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, graduating in 1999. While still a teenager, he began to write articles for the New York Press, an alternative newspaper.
After he wrote an essay that was published by The New York Times Magazine, several of his essays about his young adult life ended up being combined into his first book, Teen Angst? Naaah.... Vizzini attended Hunter College, also located in Manhattan. Ned Vizzini currently lives in Los Angeles and continues to write and to speak about his books. Ned Vizzini | Home Vizzini's characters and situations are said to be based upon his time spent at Stuyvesant.
Teen Angst? Naaah..., a "quasi-autobiography" that consists of essays about Vizzini's young adult years attending Stuyvesant High School.
Be More Chill, Vizzini's fiction debut follows the adventures of Jeremy Heere, a terminally "uncool" teenage boy. Jeremy's life changes when he buys a "squip", a pill that gives the user instructions on how to act cool.
It's Kind of a Funny Story, Vizzini's second novel follows a depressed young man who becomes suicidal and checks himself into a psychiatric hospital. The book was inspired by Vizzini's own brief hospitalization for depression in November 2004, as described in the book's endnotes. Its movie rights have been sold to Paramount. The motion picture, starring Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, and Emma Roberts and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, debuted on October 8, 2010.