Harry's Trees (Cohen) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1958
• Where—Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Connecticut College; R.N. (nursing)
• Awards—Saturn Award for Best Writing (screenwriting)
• Currently—lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


Jon Cohen is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of several novels, most recently, Harry's Trees (2018). As a screenwriter he is best known for co-writing the 2002 film Minority Report.

A native of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Cohen was the son of a librarian and a English professor. After earning a B.A. in English, he switched tracks and got a second degree as a Registered Nurse, after which he worked for 10 years as a critical care nurse in Philadelphia.

During his time in nursing, Cohen began to write stories and, in 1991, published his first novel, Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger. That same year Cohen also received a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The following year, 1992, Cohen's second book, The Man in the Window, came out (the novel was reissued in 2013 by Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries), and a third, Dentist Man, came out in 1993.

Then Cohen made another change: he decided to teach himself screenwriting—a decision that eventually led to working on the script for Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. That screenplay won him the 2002 Saturn Award for Best Writing (he shared the award with co-writer Scott Frank).

In 2018, Cohen published his fourth novel, Harry's Trees, in 2018. (Adapted from Wikipedia and BookPage. Retrieved 9/5/2018.)