معرفی
Joe Scapellato serves as the Margaret Hollinshead Ley Professor in Poetry and Creative Writing and Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, with additional teaching appointments at Susquehanna University. Holding an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University, he brings substantial creative expertise to his academic roles.
His scholarly focus centers on creative writing across multiple forms, with particular emphasis on fiction (short stories, novels), screenwriting (film, TV, web series), poetry, and creative nonfiction. His teaching portfolio encompasses Contemporary American literature and various narrative techniques.
Scapellato's creative research explores the American West through absurdist and surreal lenses, examining place, myth, masculinity, and the boundaries between wholeness and brokenness. His work transforms familiar Western archetypes through inventive, hallucinatory prose that elevates everyday encounters into epic narratives, creating what critics describe as a 'subversive love letter to The Wild West.'
His publications appear in prestigious venues including Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Post Road, North American Review, and Electric Literature. His debut story collection Big Lonesome (2017) received critical acclaim for its genre-blending approach to Western mythology, with the New York Times Book Review noting how 'normally quotidian encounters become epic in Scapellato's worlds.'
As West Branch Editor, Scapellato actively contributes to literary discourse while maintaining a robust creative output that includes his novel The Made-Up Man (2019). His writing has been anthologized in Harper Perennial's Forty Stories and other significant collections, demonstrating his standing within contemporary literary circles.
