HOWARD JUNKER
Howard Junker was born in Port Washington, NY,
a town Fitzgerald called East Egg in The Great Gatsby.
A graduate of Amherst, he later bought his doctorate of divinity by mail for $35 from the Clayton Theological Institute.
After serving in the Naval Air Reserve as an antisubmarine warfare technician, Junker turned freelancer, writing for, among others, Architectural Digest, Art in America, Artforum, Esquire, Film Comment, Harper's Bazaar, The Nation, The New Republic, New York, Newsweek, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and Vogue.
He has also labored as a documentary filmmaker, televison producer, carpenter, a junior high science teacher, fondue cook, a P.R. flack, technical editor, and actor, appearing in the cult films The Werewolf of Washington and I am a Sex Addict.
In 1985 he founded ZYZZYVA, the journal of West Coast writers and artists, editing 90 issues and five anthologies of work from its pages, as well as four ZYZZYVA 'first' novels and three ZYZZYVA 'first' collections of poems. He retired from ZYZZYVA at the end of 2010.
A prolific blogger, he lives in San Francisco with his wife, with whom he goes to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market early Saturday mornings.
An Old Junker
Description: the predictably autobiographical nonfiction novel of an
ex-litmag editor—Junker founded the journal ZYZZYVA in 1985 and retired last year. It is also a coming-of-[old]-age novel, a blognovel, and a novel of Proustian ideas.