Joseph Skibell

Joseph Skibell is an American writer from Lubbock, Texas, best known for the writing of a series of novels, essays, and memos with plot lines with a wide-ranging collection of wisdom from the Talmud. Living in Lubbock, his childhood was steeped in pop music and he asserts that he found inspiration for his works from the works of the greats of the 70s such as Jackson Browne and Bob Dylan. His love for the poetic lyrics of the greats was one of the very first indications that he might just find a career in storytelling. As for his literary inspiration, he cites the Talmud as his most favorite work as he believes it combines the best elements of the literary greats from Tom Stoddard, to Sophocles, to Shakespeare. However, he takes a lot of inspiration from almost anyone and even cites the work of Chinua Achebe the Nigerian author as an influential work in the writing his novels. Nonetheless, his early years were spent reading the likes of John Steinbeck, Samuel Beckett, and Edward Albee. He would later attend the University of Texas, Austin in 1981, but spent much of the following years doing a range of jobs that included bar tending at a Los Angeles tennis club, screenwriting for the Bryna Company, copy editing for the Argonaut Newspaper in Marina del Ray, and baking bread in Taos, New Mexico. He would go back to school attaining a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Michener Center for Writers in 1996. After getting his degree, he shifted focus from screenplays and plays to focus on novel writing. He published his first novel “A Blessing on the Moon” in 1997.