Joseph Cassara

Biography

Creative Writing welcomed Joseph Cassara to the Creative Writing Fiction Faculty in Fall, 2020. https://www.josephcassara.com/about

Joseph Cassara is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel The House of Impossible Beauties (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018), which won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, two International Latino Book Awards, the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Fiction Book, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. It was selected by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Writers program and by WH Smith in the UK for their Fresh Talent program. The novel was excerpted in the Wall Street Journal and was listed as one of the best literary novels of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Library Journal, and the American Librarian Association's Over The Rainbow Booklist.

He holds a BA in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has received fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Studios of Key West, and California Humanities. His short fiction, essays, and criticism have been featured in or are forthcoming in The New York Times Style Magazine, The Boston Review, Asymptote, and a London-based anthology titled The Queer Bible.

Please enjoy this snapshot of Assistant Professor Joseph Cassara, available on Youtube; Joseph Cassara: Marcus Endowed Chair in Creative Writing - YouTube.