Joe
Benevento attended parochial
schools in Queens through high school before enrolling in NYU, where he
completed a B.A. in English and Spanish (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa).
After an M.A. in English from Ohio State and a Ph.D. in English from Michigan
State, where he wrote a dissertation comparing the literary efforts and
theories of Walt Whitman and Jorge Luis Borges, Benevento accepted a teaching
position at Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University), where he still
serves as Professor of English, teaching courses mostly in creative writing and
American literature (including Latino/Latina), though also in Mystery, Young
Adult Literature and even Elementary Spanish. At Truman he has also been
Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Composition, Convener of the English
Department and, for eighteen years, co-editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern.
 After giving up his
dream of becoming a world renowned singer-songwriter, Benevento turned his
creative efforts full time to poetry and fiction; his first published short
story, “Meeting Borges,” appeared in 1984. Since that time his poems, stories,
essays and reviews have appeared in about 275 places, including: Poets &
Writers, The Chattahoochee Review, Pearl, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Wisconsin Review, The Cape Rock, Inkwell, South Dakota Review, RE: Arts &
Letters, The Potomac, U.S. Catholic and Bilingual Review. His work has three
times been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In 1991 he was
one of seven people featured in a special issue of The MacGuffin, “New Decade,
New Writers,” and was the overall prize winner for the best short story of the
issue. In 2009 he was a finalist for the Bordighera Poetry Prize.
Benevento’s books include three novels, two
full length poetry volumes, two poetry chapbooks, a book of short stories and
work as an editor for
a book of poems by his late friend and colleague Jim Thomas. They are, in order
of appearance: Holding On, Warthog Press, 1996; Willing To Believe, Timberline
Press, 2003; Plumbing In Harlem, Independence Books, 2003; The Odd Squad,
Behler Publications, 2005; My Puerto Rican Past, Ginninderra Press, 2006; Brief
Tracks (by Jim Thomas, edited and with an introduction by Joe Benevento), Truman
State University Press, 2009; Tough Guys Don’t Write, Finishing Line Press,
2011; The Monsignor's Wife, Moonshine Cove Press, 2013.
Much of Joe
Benevento’s poetry and fiction is inspired by his time living in a working
class neighborhood in Queens, which was an exclusively white neighborhood when
he was a small boy, but a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood by his
teen years. This topic is most apparent in his multicultural, urban young adult
novel, The Odd Squad (a finalist for the 2006 John Gardner Fiction Book Award), which is based in
part on his having grown up the only white in a peer group of blacks, Puerto
Ricans and Ecuadorians. Other key autobiographical elements in much of his work
include his Italian-American, Roman Catholic, working class heritage, and his
having lived for the past thirty years in the small town, very white, mostly
non-ethnic Midwest, after those first twenty-two years in NYC.
Joe Benevento has
been married for the past twenty-two years to Carol Fohey Benevento. They have
together four children, Maria, a junior at Creighton, Joey, a freshman at
Emory, Claire, just beginning Kirksville High School, and Margaret, just
beginning first grade at Mary Immaculate School in Kirksville, Missouri.
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