Possessing “a gifted, committed imagination” (New York Times), Joseph Skibell is the author of three novels, A BLESSING ON THE MOON, THE ENGLISH DISEASE and A CURABLE ROMANTIC, and the forthcoming collection of nonfiction stories, MY FATHER'S GUITAR AND OTHER IMAGINARY THINGS. He has received numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Award in Jewish Literature, and Story magazine’s Short Short-Story Prize.

As director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature from 2008 to 2015, he sang and played guitar onstage with both Margaret Atwood and Paul Simon. A professor at Emory University, Skibell has also taught at the University of Wisconsin and the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, and is currently a senior fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.