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Mark SaFranko is an American writer, playwright and actor based in New Jersey. His work is primarily located in the crime and confessional genres. SaFranko has written over 100 short stories, over 50 of which have been printed, as well as poetry, essays, and four novels. He has also written a dozen plays, some produced in New York and others staged in Ireland. [1]
SaFranko was born in Trenton, New Jersey. [2] After attending Notre Dame High School, SaFranko turned towards writing, citing Henry Miller On Writing as a key influence, when he was aged around 18 or 19. [3]
SaFranko traveled extensively, settling for the longest period in Hoboken, New Jersey. During this time, he worked in many different jobs to sustain enough income to continue writing: a truck driver, freight loader, clothing salesman, short-order cook, dinner theater actor, factory hand, bar musician, bank clerk, political risk analyst, office temp, crime and sports reporter, fast food worker, and telephone sales solicitor. [4]
SaFranko has written four novels: Hating Olivia, Lounge Lizard, The Favor, and Hopler’s Statement. Reviewers have noted that his work "has its roots in painfully lived experience", [5] and portrays an "ugly and bleak" depiction of life. [3]
SaFranko's earlier novels, The Favor and Hopler's Statement, are in the crime genre.
The Favor, published by Aegina Press, follows the life of Timothy Biddle, an introverted worker who is drawn into an extramarital affair that ends in murder.
Hopler's Statement, which received a wider audience than The Favor, features a Rashomon-like narrative, where events surrounding a crime are told through a variety of different viewpoints.
SaFranko's recent novels have featured 'Max Zajack', SaFranko's literary alter-ego. SaFranko has rejected suggestions that the books are memoirs: "I've never written a memoir, or anything close. Autobiographical or confessional novels, yes, but no memoirs." [2] Themes in the Zajack novels include lust, obsession, violence and the desire to become an "artist". Zajack becomes a "dangerously alienated" sociopath, [6] unable to fit into conventional life.
Hating Olivia is based on SaFranko's young adulthood and a love–hate relationship with his lover, named 'Olivia Aphrodite', the goddess-like image of beauty. But like Zajack, her mental state is volatile, leading to physical and mental abuse from both parties. [7]
Hating Olivia was critically well received. A review in Bizarre Magazine said: "The words 'raw,' 'brutal,' 'addictive' and 'brilliant' are so overused they have almost lost their meaning, but they are fitting descriptions of a memoir from a very, very talented author." [8] Reviewer Susan Tomaselli said that: "It's easy to spot the Hamsun, Bukowski and Fante on SaFranko's bookshelves, but to say Hating Olivia is just a facsimile of these writers is way off the mark. SaFranko writes from the heart... crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush." [9]
Hating Olivia’s sequel Lounge Lizard charts Zajack's further descent. Based on SaFranko's attempt to integrate into the corporate world of 1980s New York, Zajack sinks into a grinding job for AT&T, with his only release in a series of one-night stands and affairs with women met in New York clubs. Zajack's desire to become an artist is lost in a sea of work and sex, until he is forced to rediscover himself.
SaFranko has over 50 short stories published in a range of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine ("Acts Of Revenge"), The MacGuffin ("The Ecstasy"), and The Savage Kick Literary Magazine ("Role of A Lifetime"). His story "Rescuing Ravel" (Descant, 2005) won the Frank O'Connor Award for Best Short Fiction. "The Man In Unit 24" (Hawai’i Review) was cited in Best American Mysteries 2000.
SaFranko's short stories fluctuate between realism and crime, and often combine both. Although the narrative shifts between first- and third-person, the emphasis is often on the central character's mental state, and interior thought. According to Murder Slim Press, a collection of SaFranko's story stories will appear in 2008. [10]
SaFranko's plays have featured on Off-Off Broadway venues, and through theaters in Ireland, including Dancing For Men, The Bitch-Goddess, and Incident in the Combat Zone. [11] The plays feature SaFranko's emphasis on dark themes mixed with dark humour. A review in The Carrigdhoun said that "SaFranko's two black comedies are mini-masterpieces of acute observation and dark humour, but at all times entertaining and captivating." [12]
He has also appeared in a series of low-budget films, including A Better Place and The Road From Erebus.
SaFranko is a long-term friend of fellow author Dan Fante, and introduced Fante to his current wife. [7]
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 23 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, works of non-fiction and some essays.
Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City.
James Myers Thompson was an American prose writer and screenwriter, known for his hardboiled crime fiction.
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel Ask the Dust (1939) about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depression-era Los Angeles. It is widely considered the great Los Angeles novel, and is one in a series of four, published between 1938 and 1985, that are now collectively called "The Bandini Quartet." Ask the Dust was adapted into a 2006 film starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek. Fante's published works while he lived included five novels, one novella, and a short story collection. Additional works, including two novels, two novellas, and two short story collections, were published posthumously. His screenwriting credits include, most notably, Full of Life, Jeanne Eagels (1957), and the 1962 films Walk on the Wild Side and The Reluctant Saint.
John Dann MacDonald was an American writer of novels and short stories. He is known for his thrillers. A prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many set in his adopted home of Florida, he was one of the most successful American novelists of his time, MacDonald sold an estimated 70 million books. His best-known works include the popular and critically acclaimed Travis McGee series and his 1957 novel The Executioners, which was filmed twice as Cape Fear, once in 1962 and again in 1991.
The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street & Smith, which ran 24 issues. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Decades later, newly written pastiches were commissioned and published by Warner Brothers' Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974.
3:AM Magazine is a literary magazine, which was set up as 3ammagazine.com in April 2000 and is edited from Paris. Its editor-in-chief since inception has been Andrew Gallix, a lecturer at the Sorbonne.
Ecco is a New York–based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired by HarperCollins, with Halpern remaining at the head. Since 2000, Ecco has published the yearly anthology The Best American Science Writing, edited by Jesse Cohen. In 2011, Ecco created two separate publishing lines, one "curated" by chef-author Anthony Bourdain and the other by novelist Dennis Lehane.
The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents is a 1796 Gothic novel written by the English author Ann Radcliffe. It is the last book Radcliffe published during her lifetime. The Italian has a dark, mysterious, and somber tone which fixates on the themes of love, devotion, and persecution during the time period of Holy Inquisition. The novel deals with issues prevalent at the time of the French Revolution, such as religion, aristocracy, and nationality. Radcliffe's renowned use of veiled imagery is considered to have reached its height of sophistication and complexity in The Italian; concealment and disguise are central motifs of the novel. The novel is noted for its extremely effective antagonist, Father Schedoni, who influenced the Byronic characters of Victorian literature.
Ask the Dust is the most popular novel of American author John Fante, first published in 1939 and set during the Great Depression era in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of novels featuring the character Arturo Bandini as Fante's alter ego, a young Italian-American from Colorado struggling to make it as a writer in Los Angeles.
Dallas William Mayr, better known by his pen name Jack Ketchum, was an American horror fiction author. He was the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards and three further nominations. His novels included Off Season, Offspring, and Red, the latter two of which were adapted to film. In 2011, Ketchum received the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award for outstanding contribution to the horror genre.
Daniel Smart Fante was an American author and playwright. He was born in Los Angeles.
Legion is a 1983 horror novel by American writer William Peter Blatty, a sequel to The Exorcist. It was adapted for the film The Exorcist III in 1990. Like The Exorcist, it involves demonic possession. The book was the focus of a court case over its exclusion from The New York Times Best Seller list. Blatty based aspects of the Gemini Killer on the real-life Zodiac Killer, who in a January 1974 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle had praised the original Exorcist film as "the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen".
Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography.
2666 is the last novel by Roberto Bolaño. It was released in 2004 as a posthumous novel, a year after Bolaño's death. It is over 1100 pages long in its original Spanish format. It is divided into five parts. An English-language translation by Natasha Wimmer was published in the United States in 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in the United Kingdom in 2009 by Picador. It is a fragmentary novel.
Frank Edgington Fenton was an American writer of screenplays, short stories, magazine articles, and novels.
Noah Van Sciver is an independent American cartoonist who resides in Columbia, South Carolina.
James Carlos Blake is an American writer of novels, novellas, short stories, and essays. His work has received extensive critical favor and several notable awards. He has been called “one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life” as well as “one of the most original writers in America today and … certainly one of the bravest.” He is a recipient of the University of South Florida's Distinguished Humanities Alumnus Award and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
Mary Jane Maffini is a Canadian mystery writer. She has created three mystery series and written 12 novels.
Bob Hýsek, is a Czech translator from English, an editor, publisher, publicist, and organiser and populariser of slam poetry. He teaches at the Department of English and American Studies, Palacký University Olomouc Faculty of Arts.
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