Description: "Playground" features Joe Benevento's usual obsessions: working class Queens, romantic failings, the saving power of family -- equal parts ruefulness and almost unsupportable hope.
Brief description: Joe Benevento received a B.A. degree from NYU in English and Spanish (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), an M.A. in English from Ohio State and a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State. Benevento is Professor of English at Truman State U, where he teaches creative writing, American literature, (including Latino/Latina and Latin American lit. in translation) and Young Adult Literature and Mystery. He is the longtime, co-editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern. Benevento's poems, stories, essays and reviews have appeared in about 300 places, including: Poets & Writers, The Chattahoochee Review, Pearl, Wisconsin Review, Inkwell, South Dakota Review, RE: Arts & Letter, Prairie Schooner and Bilingual Review. His work has three times been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In 1991 he was featured in a special issue of The MacGuffin, "New Decade, New Writers. Benevento's books include four novels, three full length poetry volumes, three poetry chapbooks, a book of short stories and an edited book of the poetry of Jim Thomas. They are, Holding On, Warthog Press, 1996; Willing To Believe, Timberline Press, 2003; Plumbing In Harlem, Independence Books, 2003; The Odd Squad, Behler Publications, 2005 (a finalist for the 2006 John Gardner Fiction Book Award); My Puerto Rican Past, Ginninderra Press, 2006; Some of My Best Friends and Other Fictions, Lewis-Clark Press, 2008; Brief Tracks: Poems by Jim Thomas, Truman State University Press, 2009; Tough Guys Don't Write, Finishing Line Press, 2011; The Monsignor's Wife, Moonshine Cove Press, 2013; Saving St. Teresa, Black Opal Books, 2015; Expecting Songbirds, Purple Flag Imprint of the Visual Artists Collective, 2015 and After, Mouthfeel Press, 2017.