13 Facts About Mike McGrady

Michael Robinson McGrady was an American journalist and author.

Mike McGrady is perhaps best known for orchestrating the 1969 literary hoax Naked Came the Stranger, a novel he wrote with a group of fellow Newsday journalists as an attempt to parody the bestsellers of the era, with the book becoming a hit in its own right.

Mike McGrady was born in New York City, and grew up in Lilliwaup, Washington and Port Washington, New York.

Mike McGrady graduated from Yale University in 1955, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1968 and 1969.

Mike McGrady had one previous marriage which ended in divorce.

In 1962, Mike McGrady became a columnist for Newsday, a newspaper based on Long Island, where he wrote about the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.

Mike McGrady later said he had been offered $500,000 to write a sequel, but he turned it down.

Mike McGrady subsequently wrote an "instructional manual" based on the creation of the book, called Stranger than Naked: Or, How to Write Dirty Books for Fun and Profit.

Mike McGrady continued with Newsday, though he did take time off to write other books, such as The Kitchen Sink Papers: My Life as a Househusband, in which he spent a year as a homemaker while his wife was the family's sole breadwinner.

Mike McGrady said the experience made his marriage stronger, and led to him and his wife establishing equity in sharing home and professional duties.

Mike McGrady co-wrote two of Linda Lovelace's memoirs, Ordeal and Out of Bondage.

In 1982, Mike McGrady became Newsdays film critic, a position he held until he retired in 1990.

Mike McGrady died from pneumonia at a hospital in Shelton, Washington on May 13,2012, at the age of 78.