Jan Vallone
Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Jan Vallone is the granddaughter of Sicilian immigrants. An insatiable life-long learner, she holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, a Masters in Teaching from Seattle Pacific University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She has also done graduate work at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. After practicing law for eighteen years in Manhattan and in Seattle, Jan became an English teacher at a yeshiva high school. There, she and her students founded a literary journal rated excellent by The National Council of Teachers of English. Currently, Jan teaches literature and writing at a Pacific Northwest university. Her stories have appeared in Guideposts Magazine, English Journal, Writing It Real and Curriculum in Context. Pieces of Someday, a memoir, is her first full-length book. When Jan is not writing, reading or teaching, she enjoys gardening, Italian language study, traveling and spending time with her husband, children and friends.
“Life, it now seems, is a stained glass window composed of bits of translucence and opacity—fragments of yesterday, chips of today, pieces of someday, soldered with time. Some jewel-like and whole. Some fractured by the weather. Others fallen from their leaden frames. Only fusion and repair complete the image and allow us to make out the picture. Am I a scale, a harp, a star? A candle, anchor or heart? And what about tomorrow?”