Bio:
Jay Ponteri directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Marylhurst University and show:tell, The Workshop for Teen Writers & Artists. He is the founding editor of both the online literary magazine M Review and HABIT Books, a publisher of prose and poetry chapbooks. His memoir, Wedlocked, is published by Hawthorne Books, April 2013. His chapbook of short prose, Darkmouth Strikes Again, is being published by Future Tense Books, summer 2014. His essay “Listen to this” was mentioned as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2010. He has published prose in Del Sol Review, Seattle Review, Salamander, Cimarron Review, Puerto Del Sol, and Forklift, Ohio, among others.


Wedlocked

Jay Ponteri's debut memoir, Wedlocked offers readers an intimate, idiosyncratic view of his marriage. Ponteri recalls how his desire for another woman and his writing about his desire all but dissolves their marriage. Mixing memoir, essay, dream, and fabrication, the narrator carefully considers his experience of marital loneliness, of living deep inside his thoughts and dreams while yearning to be known and touched and loved by a woman who is not there. Against the backdrop of his portrait of a marriage, he recalls the lush fantasy life of his childhood and adolescence, gazes back at his insatiable male gaze, gets lost in film, recounts lessons of history, of grammar, and rants against a human institution that so often fails, leaving its inhabitants lonely and adrift. He lays bare not only his inner life but his marriage.

Jay Ponteri earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MA in English from New Mexico State University -- both degrees in fiction writing. He directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Marylhurst University and Show:Tell, The Workshop for Teen Writers & Artists. He is the founding editor of both the online literary magazine M Review and HABIT Books, a publisher of prose and poetry chapbooks. He has recently published prose in Puerto Del Sol, Salamander, Seattle Review, and Knee-Jerk Magazine. He has an interview with David Shields in the summer 2010 issue of Tin House. His essay “Listen to This” was mentioned as a “Notable Essay” in the 2010 Best American Essays.