Pete Pazmino discovered the joy of writing when he was in the third grade and his “Day at the Circus” essay won him a free trip to the Barnum and Bailey circus in Washington, DC. He attended Longwood College (now Longwood University) in Farmville, VA, where he graduated with a BA in English and some strange desire to teach public school. This he did. In 1998, he became a Teacher/Consultant with the Northern Virginia Writing Project, at which point he took over as Managing Editor for what is now the Journal of the Virginia Writing Project. He is no longer in the classroom, but he still runs the Journal.
Pete received his MA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University in 2008, where he was recognized as “Most Outstanding Graduate” and was nominated (but not chosen) for inclusion in that year’s “Best New American Voices” anthology. His stories have appeared in Circle Magazine (now defunct), JMWW, Monkeybicycle, Sunsets and Silencers, A Cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. His short story “Snake” is forthcoming in Menda City Review. He was a finalist in both the Black Warrior Review’s 2007 fiction competition and the Iowa Review’s 2006 fiction competition, and was nominated for storySouth’s 2009 Million Writers Award. He attended the 2008 Writer’s Conference at Sewanee.
Pete lives, writes, and drinks lots of great local wine in Manassas, Virginia, where he shares a townhouse near the battlefields with his awesome but mildly psychotic dog Marley. He is hard at work on both his first novel and a short story collection.