Bio

Joseph Skibell (pronounced SKY-bell) is the author of three novels, A BLESSING ON THE MOON, THE ENGLISH DISEASE and A CURABLE ROMANTIC,  a collection of true stories, MY FATHER'S GUITAR & OTHER IMAGINARY THINGS, and a mythopoetic study entitled SIX MEMOS FROM THE LAST MILLENNIUM: A NOVELIST READS THE TALMUD. He has received numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Award in Jewish Literature, and the Turner Prize. His work has been described as “daring in its … honesty” (New York Times); “witty and profound” (Jerusalem Report); “laugh-outloud humorous” (Forward); “brave … unafraid” (New York Journal of Books); “magical” (New Yorker); “high-energy, wild” (New Republic); and “wholly original” (JM Coetzee). Skibell’s novels, stories and essays have been widely anthologized and translated, most recently into Ido and Chinese. He has written or translated essays for three books of photographs: Loli Kantor’s BEYOND THE FOREST, Neil Folberg’s THE SERPENT'S CHRONICLE, and FRED STEIN: PARIS NEW YORK; and he edited and wrote an introduction for NECESSARY STORIES, Haim Watzman's collection of stories from the Jerusalem Post. Skibell's stories, essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, LitHub, Tablet, the Utne Reader, Fretboard Journal, and many other publications. From 2008 to 2015, he was the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. Recently a Senior Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, he is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities at Emory University. He lives in Atlanta and Tesuque, NM, and is at work on a new novel.