Jonathan Raymond (born June 26, 1971), usually credited Jon Raymond, is an American writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is best known for writing the novels The Half-Life and Rain Dragon, and for writing the short stories and novels adapted for the films Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and First Cow, all directed by Kelly Reichardt, with whom he co-wrote the screenplays.
He published his first novel, The Half-Life in May 2004, which was released by Bloomsbury. The novel takes place in Oregon and revolves around two parallel storylines: the cook Cookie Figowitz meeting with the refugee Henry Brown in 1820s Oregon, and 160 years later (1980), Tina Plank befriending Trixie, a girl with a troubled past.[2] The novel won a Publishers Weekly "Best Book of 2004" award.
In 2008, Raymond published his first collection of short stories, entitled Livability, which won the Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction in 2009.[3] The collection was also a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writer’s" selection. Three stories from that collection ("Old Joy", "Train Choir", and "The Suckling Pig") were adapted into feature films.
In 2012, Raymond also published a second novel, Rain Dragon, which revolves around the character of Damon and his girlfriend Amy, who have had enough of Los Angeles and decide to leave the city to work on a community farm.
"The Suckling Pig", a third story from Livability, was adapted into the 2023 film Earthlings by Steven Doughton, and premiered at the Göteborg Film Festival in Sweden.
Screenwriting
Raymond has co-written, with the director Kelly Reichardt, the screenplays for two of her films based on his short stories, Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008), as well as for First Cow (2019), based on his novel The Half Life. For Old Joy, he was nominated, along with the director and producers of the film, for a John Cassavetes Award from the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards.
Raymond also co-wrote all the teleplays (all five episodes) for the 2011 five-part HBO miniseries, Mildred Pierce, directed and also co-written by Todd Haynes based on James M. Cain's novel, and starring Kate Winslet as the title character, as well as Guy Pearce, Melissa Leo, Evan Rachel Wood and others. For his writing work on the show, Raymond was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for "Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special" (shared with Todd Haynes).
Raymond produced the 2012 feature film, Buoy, directed by Steven Doughton and starring Matthew Del Negro and Tina Holmes. He has also served as the assistant to Writer/Director Todd Haynes on the set of his 2002 film, Far From Heaven, starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid. Raymond used the name "Slats Grobnik" (a character created by Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko) when he worked as Haynes' assistant on Far From Heaven, and Roger Ebert noticed this deep in the credits and wrote about it in his "Movie Yearbook 2004."[9]
