Joseph Cavano

After spending a significant part of my life teaching English in the secondary schools and colleges of upstate New York, I followed the advice of former teachers from grade school to graduate school and became a writer. Within the first two years, I had put together two collections of related short stories, Half -Past Nowhere, and Love Songs in Minor Keys. Each was accepted for publication by the first and only publisher I contacted.

Patterned after Hemingway's In Our Time, Half-past Nowhere traces the growth of a young hero as he passes from the innocence to the understanding that comes only with experience. Two of the included stories, "Mountain Men" and "Phineas Rising, "the first and the third story I ever wrote for publication, were selected as finalists by Glimmer Train, one of the most prestigious venues for the short story.

The second collection,Love Songs in Minor Keys is a study of human relationships in all of their many and oftentimes destructive manifestations. As the title suggests, the stories function as do minor keys in music.Unlike major keys, which are often bright and reassuring,minor keys suggest more complexity, a kind of intensity reserved for the unorthodox or unexpected,while still retaining enough of the familiar to be easily recognizable. The collection makes for easy,if thought provoking reading. I am very grateful to Anthony Abbott,(Ph.D Harvard)legendary professor of literature at Davidson College,himself a published poet/novelist and Pulitzer Prize nominee,as well as David Geherin,(Ph.D, Purdue) short story specialist at Eastern Michigan University, and a candidate for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best book of literary criticism, for their kind comments.

Many of my stories have won awards and appeared in well-respected literary magazines. "Soldier's," a story about a chance encounter with a broken Vietnam veteran was selected as a finalist in both the 2010 Doris Betts and the 2010 Elizabeth Simpson Smith Fiction Contest, while another,the controversial "The Honey Wagon," was awarded second place in the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize and appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of the prestigious North Carolina Literary Review.

Another recent story, "Story Cloth," appeared in the 2012 Spring issue of Potomac Review, while the disturbing "The Widow's Tale," has been selected by editor Cliff Garstang to appear in the Press 53 Fall 2014 anthology, Everywhere Stories: Fiction from a Small Planet.

Over the years, I've developed a myriad of interests.One of the most challenging has been improvising jazz on piano. Doing so involves a process not unlike the one a writer utilizes in creating a work of fiction. In each case,you don't know where you are going until you get there. That element of discovery is one of the most satisfying things about writing,and a point I often demonstrate at book signings.

Having been born in "the Charmed Circle" of the Catskill Mts., it's not surprising that Nature figures prominently in many of my stories,although always as a backdrop for some universal law(the verities Faulkner called them).

A one time wine connoisseur,ginseng hunter,fly fisherman,rattlesnake hunter(pictures only) and still world traveler(India is my favorite by far) I happily reside in the South among the bones of Faulkner,Welty,Twain, Capote et al.

I have an M.A. in English from American University in Washington,D.C., and a B.A.in English from Marist College in Poughkeepsie,N.Y. I have also studied philosophy at the graduate level at Georgetown and have several advanced degrees in Education.