Salman Rushdie’s most recent novel, Quichotte, was shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize. He is the author of thirteen previous novels-Grimus, Midnight's Children(for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life,  Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, and The Golden House-and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction-Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line-and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.  

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of the president of Northwestern Bell Telephone Company (AT&T), Ted Hartley was educated at Annapolis, Georgetown University and Harvard Business School. While at Annapolis, he was a U.S. Olympic finalist (wrestling).  

As a Navy-carrier-based, jet fighter pilot, he served in widely ranging areas of the world including two years as a White House aide in the Kennedy-Eisenhower era. At 30, he suffered injuries from an aircraft accident and was forced into disability retirement as a Lieutenant Commander.   

As a civilian, he moved successively through a number of executive jobs, finally as Executive Vice President of First Western Financial Corporation.  When that company was purchased by a larger bank, he decided to move out of banking and was in Los Angeles on a job interview. By a fluke, he was invited to play a continuing role in a dramatic television series, Peyton Place, as the Reverend Jerry Bradford. That led to movies in co-star roles with Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, Dean Martin and Robert Redford. He starred as the lead in his own television series Chopper One, on ABC. He had begun taking assignments in directing television commercials and producing smaller films when he seized the opportunity to become a major stockholder in RKO Pictures Corporation, an historic now independent production studio. Ultimately, he took over as CEO.

There he has produced a dozen films and a number of television movies. He expanded RKO into Broadway. Productions including Gypsy (2008), 13 (2008), Big Fish (2013), Curtains (2007) as lead producer, and Never Gonna Dance (2003) Dr. Zhivago (2015). His most recent stage production, Top Hat, opened on London’s West End in the spring of 2012 and won the Olivier Award for the Best New Musical. 

He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars) and is a Tony voter.  

Ted Hartley is active on several corporate and charity boards. He is the former Chairman of ORBIS International, which prevents and treats blindness worldwide through its flying eye-hospital program. He is a founding director of the Steadman Philippon Research Institute.  

He serves on the board of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton. He has appeared in productions on the Guild Hall stage as an actor.    

He was married to the late Dina Merrill, the actress.  He has one son and two grandsons.   

More than a decade ago, Dina was entering into what would be a long period of declining health. Ted, looking for ways to keep her active emotionally and mentally, initiated twice a week art classes in their home, inviting Dina's friends to join. "It gave her pals an easy way to see her and to do something together." He found personal satisfaction in his own artwork as well.

After Dina's death, her friends wanted to continue the classes and Hartley started it up again. Now fully exploring his own found passion in painting, he progressed from representational art into more daring subjective expressionism. His fellow art group members encouraged his work which became suddenly a major force in his creative life. 

In the fall of 2019, his first one-artist opening at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor sold out most of the offerings.