Sweet Salt

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Robert Mayer attended the City College of NY, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After a brief stint at the Washington Post, he joined the staff of Newsday. He spent ten years there, six as a reporter and four as the paper’s New York City columnist. In 1968 he won the National Headliner Award as the best feature columnist in the country. In 1969 he won the Mike Berger Award for the year’s best writing about New York City. In 1971 he received the Mike Berger Award again, becoming the first person to win it twice. He then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to write books and articles. Mayer is the author of twelve books-ten novels and two works of non-fiction. Three of the books have been reissued in new editions during the past few years. They include Superfolks, which (for better or worse) altered the treatment of super heroes in comics and movies forever; Notes of a Baseball Dreamer, a memoir about growing up as a wannabe major leaguer in the city; and The Dreams of Ada, the true story of two men spending life in prison for a murder they did not commit. Between writing books Mayer served six years as managing editor and then editor of The Santa Fe Reporter, an alternative weekly. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Condé Naste Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Metropolitan Home, Rocky Mountain Magazine and numerous other publications. Currently he is completing a new novel.