Jeff Bender’s work has appeared in Guernica, Captain Fiction, and the compilation 101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do.  Glimmer Train selected his story “Roommates” as a finalist for its annual Short Story Award for New Writers and “Diet” as a Top-25 finalist for its Very Short Story Award. 

He earned an MFA from Columbia where he received a Graham Fellowship and a Research Arts Fellowship.  Workshops include the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA; the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, OR; and the Rittenhouse Writers Group in Philadelphia.  He is the founding member of Philadelphia’s Steak Fiction Workshop.  Residencies include the Albee Foundation in Montauk, NY; the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, WY; and the Montana Artists Refuge in Basin, MT. 

He teaches writing at Temple University and lives in Philadelphia. 

Recent presentations:

    -KGB Bar (New York, NY)

    -EARSHOT (Brooklyn, NY)

    -Kelly Writers House (University of Pennsylvania)

    -First Person Salons (Philadelphia, PA)

    -Tin House (Portland, OR)

    -Jentel Presents (Sheridan, WY)

  

PROJECTS:

The Weight (a novel)

Bender’s first novel about NCAA wrestling.

To read an excerpt from Guernica magazine or Sam Lipsyte’s essay in Guernica, click on the links above-right. 

Recent readings:

-MANMOTH series, Friday, November 13, 7:00 p.m. @ Cha-Cha’razzi Gallery, 1918 Bancroft Street (near 16th & Mifflin), Philadelphia, PA 

-LIVE at the Writers House series, University of Pennsylvania:  Monday, November 30, 7:00 p.m. Syndicated on 88.5 WXPN Philadelphia: Monday, December 7, 8:00 p.m. Click the link above to hear the reading.

Archery (screenplay)

Co-written with with David Englander, Archery is about a twentysomething copywriter who, just a year after he broke up with her, learns that his ex-girlfriend is getting married in five days. Oddly he gets invited and  now has to find a date.

Bender and Englander are at work on a second draft. 

La Reforma (memoir)

A third project is the memoir La Reforma about the life of a gritty fishing village in Sinaloa on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

In July 2009, Bender presented vignettes from La Reforma for the First Person Salon in Philadelphia. This project is currently on layaway.

But click here to watch the YouTube video

Thank you to First Person Arts in Philadelphia.

Meatheads (stories)

The manuscript for “Diet” earned Bender a spot at the Montana Artists Refuge and the Edward Albee Foundation; the manuscript for “Roommates” won him a Jentel fellowship. To hear an mp3 of “Diet” (recorded at Fergies Pub in Philadelphia) go to the link titled “Podcasts.”

Currently Bender’s drafting a story called “Workout” about a workout-anorectic who gets injured and falls into a strange crowd.