About

Oklahoman by birth, Californian by upbringing, and New Yorker by choice and longevity, Jim Story is a novelist, short-story writer and poet. He has published short stories, creative nonfiction, reviews and poetry in a variety of literary publications, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, won a Best New Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and held a residency at the Edward Albee Center in Montauk, Long Island. Jim also studied with Ben Fountain in Belize in a workshop sponsored by the magazine Zoetrope All-Story in 2011, as well as with Jim Shepard at Sirenland (La Sirenuse) in Positano, Italy in 2014, in a workshop conducted by One Story magazine.

An ex-college professor (Russian History), Jim holds a PhD from Columbia University and a certificate from the Russian (now Harriman) Institute. He lives in New York City with his partner, Jill.

Recent Publications/Current Projects

Jim’s latest novel, The Condor’s Shadow (published July 2023) is now available on Amazon. Suspenseful, poignant, romantic, and described as “the legend of a loner in the great West” (Ronald Story [no relation]) and “a captivating American odyssey” (Jonathan Woods), The Condor’s Shadow is already earning lavish praise, including the following: “…Jim Story proves to be a master storyteller” (Manuel Gonzales). Set in California, Montana and the Pacific Northwest, Condor follows its major character, Clayton Poole, in a layered fashion, moving back and forth through time from the early 1950s to the present, as he struggles to escape, rectify and finally reconcile the forces that have shadowed his life.

His comic adventure novel, Problems of Translation, published in 2015 and still available on Amazon and elsewhere, has been called “An insanely amusing adventure that has a deep love of language at it its belly-shaking core” (Gary Shteyngart) and “A sure-handed narrative led by a hapless but resilient adventurer” (Kirkus Reviews). Videos and audios of readings from this novel and his other works can be accessed here.

Jim has a collection of linked fiction called Soil, Sand, Stories, which should be up next (he’ll be putting the finishing touches on it in the coming months). The story of the Woods family of small-town Oklahoma and California’s San Joaquin Valley, it is, according to Jim, a bittersweet, sometimes humorous, basket of tales about a hardscrabble life on a corporation farm, and told “about as close to mirroring my actual family as I can allow myself to get.” That book should see the light of day next year. A number of those stories–or earlier versions of them–have been published previously in magazines such as Karamu, And Then, The Same, Big City Lit and Home Planet News, but all are polished and honed for this book.

Another “novel-in-stories,” written during the pandemic, keeps pushing to be delivered next (perhaps as early as 2025). Called Professor Fairweather Hits the Skids, it’s a droll take on a shocked and bewildered college professor, cast loose from his moorings as a teacher and struggling to find a job that will keep him afloat in a troubled NYC economy.

Another collection of stories, titled Love and Other Terminal Diseases, may see light after that, with stories from Folio, Confrontation, Pindeldyboz, The Same, and BigCityLit.com, as well as others of more recent vintage and some oldies recently re-worked.

Click here for a selection of Jim’s readings at the Cornelia Street Café.

For further biographical information, see Jim’s blog, Today’s Story. Other biographical tidbits are shared in an interview with the Women’s National Book Association.