Joanna Clapps Herman’s forthcoming memoir called How To Build an Italian: Six Rules will be published in fall of 2018. Her books include No Longer and Not Yet (2014), a collection of short stories, about families on The Upper West Side of Manhattan and a memoir, The Anarchist Bastard (2011) which begins, “I often say that I was born in 1944 but raised in the 15th Century because although I was born in Waterbury, CT, in a New England factory town, in post-WWII, I grew up in a large southern Italian family where the rules were absolute, and customs antiquated.” She is co-editor of two anthologies, Our Roots are Deep with Passion (2006) and Wild Dreams (2008). She has published widely in literary journals as a poet, a fiction writer and an essayist. joannaclappsherman.com
Joseph Salvatore is the author of the story collection To Assume A Pleasing Shape (BOA Editions, 2011) and the co-author of the college textbook Understanding English Grammar (Pearson, 2015). He is the Books Editor at The Brooklyn Rail and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. His fiction has appeared in The Collagist, Dossier Journal, Epiphany, H.O.W. Journal, New York Tyrant, Open City, Post Road, Rain Taxi, Salt Hill, Sleeping Fish, and Willow Springs, among others. He is an associate professor of writing and literature at The New School in New York City, where he founded the literary journal LIT. www.
