Mark Chiusano is a journalist and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, and the story collection Marine Park, a PEN/Hemingway honorable mention. He spent nearly eight years writing about New York politics and policy at Newsday and now contributes to places like New York magazine, Politico Magazine, TIME, The Nation, and Documented. He has also published fiction in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Iowa Review, and Electric Lit and founded the fiction Substack Works Progress. He was a 2024 finalist for the Richard J. Margolis Award for nonfiction writers of social-justice journalism, among other awards. He teaches English at the College of Technology, City University of New York, and is a senior fellow at New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law.
Chiusano spent the last year working app-based jobs, from delivery biking to rideshare driving to online rating, to report for his current book project about the underbelly of the gig economy.
Selected Work
- A Mother Took Her Sons to an ICE Check-In. She Never Saw Them Again: A New York Magazine feature on two brothers caught in Trump’s new deportation state.
- The Call Center Where George Santos Learned to Con: On the Queens call center where the famous fabulist got his start, also published in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer.
- Stumped – Why Write (or Read) a Campaign Book?: Reviewing all the books by 2024 GOP presidential contenders, for The Drift.
- Autumn in the COVID-19 ICU: Inside New York hospitals for Newsday during the pandemic.