Gene Weingarten , 58, is the nationally syndicated humor columnist for The Washington Post. After 19 years as an editor and staff writer for the newspaper, he retired in June 2009 but remains on contract.

A collection of Weingarten’s long feature stories will be published this summer by Simon & Schuster under the title “The Fiddler In the Subway — And Other Great Pieces You May Have Missed." The title refers to his story about violinist Joshua Bell, which won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2008.

In partnership with his son, Dan, and cartoonist David Clark, Weingarten has created a comic strip called “Barney & Clyde” that is scheduled for national newspaper syndication this summer. Weingarten has also written three books, “The Hypochondriac’s Guide to Life. And Death” (Simon & Schuster, 1998); “I’m With Stupid” (with Gina Barreca, Simon & Schuster, 2004); and “Old Dogs” (Simon & Schuster, 2008).

Before he joined The Post, Weingarten was the editor of Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. A college dropout, he was somehow awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1987. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Arlene Reidy, a lawyer.