J. Michael Lennon is an American academic and writer who is the Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University and the late Norman Mailer’s archivist and authorized biographer. He published Mailer's official biography Norman Mailer: A Double Life in 2013. He edited Mailer's selected letters in 2014 and the Library of America's two-volume set Norman Mailer: The Sixties in 2018.

Nachem Malech Mailer, known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.