I'm Jake, a writer from rural Pennsylvania. I write essays, fiction, and, when I'm broke, magazine features.  

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My essays and features appear in The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, Belt Magazine, Hobart, Catapult, Current Affairs, and others. Fiction in Southern Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salamander, and others. 

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My first job was working on a garbage truck and since then I've been a social worker, a greenhouse attendant, and a commercial fishing deckhand. I teach college English now but I'm still trying to describe the sound of the ocean.

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Speaking of that: my first novel, Slime Line, will be published by West Virginia University Press in 2024.

 

Slime Line is the story of one guy's maniacal quest to become a shift supervisor at a small Alaskan salmon processing plant. I think you'll like it because it says motherfucker 47 times and there's a scene where somebody gets stuck inside a dead whale.

 

Representation by Martha Wydysh at Trident Media Group and Orly Greenberg at United Talent Agency. 

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Subscribe to my lil newsletter here. 

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Or see pictures of my dog here.