John Paul Jaramillo was born and raised in Southern Colorado. At Oregon State University he earned his MFA in creative writing (fiction) and currently works as Professor of English in the Arts and Humanities Department of Lincoln Land Community College-Springfield, Illinois. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the Acentos Review, Palabra, A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art and Somos en Escrito. In 2013 his collection The House of Order was named an International Latino Book Award Finalist. In 2013 Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature listed Jaramillo as one of its Top 10 New Latino Authors to Watch and Read. His writing explores the Southern Colorado steel industry and neighborhoods as well as the link between family, trauma, and place. As Mary Jean Porter writes, "Jaramillo is writing about working in Southern Colorado farm fields, driving and drinking beer and smoking pot; visiting family members in the state penitentiary; about tattooed pregnant girls, dirty kids in laundromats and their desperate mothers, back through several generations. What saves these stories is the grace in which they are written."
"These stories find John Paul Jaramillo hitting his stride as an acute observer and chronicler of hard and valuable lives. The writing conveys great warmth and understanding. This is a career to watch." --Tracy Daugherty, author of One Day the Wind Changed"Besides the razor-sharp writing which brings even those characters whom we meet only briefly vividly and memorably to life, what compelled me was my affection and concern for the narrator, who sets out to record the stories of his elders, and through them, to understand the forces that have shaped and directed his own experience. The result is a collection of stories that holds together like a shattered vessel, whose fragments have been gathered and expertly glued. Manito himself, battered by drink and drugs and the abuses of combat, barely holds together sometimes -- but even at his lowest and darkest, the impulse remains in him to comfort and assist. It's this that saves him, and that sets this collection apart -- and above, in my opinion -- less forgiving depictions of people struggling to take control of their lives." --Jennifer C. Cornell, author of Departures
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