Hi. Thanks for your interest.
I’m Dan Julian, and I’ve been writing my whole life.
Education-wise, I took a B.A. in English Language and Letters from Indiana University and pursued an M.A. In Lit, too, at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to about the halfway mark toward the degree, at which point I realized that becoming a professor (my goal at the time) wasn’t for me. But I have written and co-written and ghost-written, assessed and edited and graded my fair share of college papers. I have TA-proffed composition and proofed innumerable drafts – from simple essays to grants and papers published in scholarly reviews. I helped a Chinese man polish his doctoral thesis on how water moves through trees. I corrected scholarly journal articles about declining replacement rates in recent generations of Italian population. And one season, I played editorial staff on Permafrost, UAF’s art/lit journal. I was invited to UNLV once to present a paper I wrote on postmodern humor.
When I left grad school, I moved to South Korea. Living and teaching there for five years, I generated curricula for instruction of English as a Second Language – several large sets of lesson plans with supporting materials and visual aids and presentation plans. These curricula were published annually in a handbook for students (our pupils were teachers themselves, in the public schools, doing their continuing education in ESL). I also wove a handful of popular fairytales into a script based on The Sound of Music, producing a two-act musical for kids studying ESL to perform. That wasn’t my first stab at the stage; I once had a three-act play awarded by the National Society of Arts and Letters. They gave me $350!
I have a chapter in a book on the work of ChangHan Kim, a South Korean oilpainter. Also while in Korea, I wrote features for two art and culture magazines, and essays on culture shock for the local newspaper in my host city of Jeju. Jeju Island has an old culture replete with shamanic tales, and I edited for publication several traditional stories from an oral parable tradition.
In my favorite little stateside city of Bloomington, Indiana, I have written the music review issue’s main feature for the Ryder free magazine (pen name Julian Riggs), and once put a write-your-congressman column in the daily newspaper demonstrating about protection of privacy on the internet (pen name IN Spectre). That was way back in the 90’s when the web was just getting sticky.
In Albuquerque, NM, I took 2nd in the better paper’s contest to write a piece on something other than a piece of paper. On a tire-flattened large Subway cup, I penned a review of a night out at a hip cafe where we sat on the floor and watched a Sidney Poitier movie.
Under a couple more pseudonyms, I have self-published one book of creative nonfiction, and had another book, a memoir, published by a small press. Both of these sell on Amazon. My 2014 royalties totaled fifty bucks. (!)
My recent output has included a series of five novellas called The Diamond Grenade which weighs in at just under 25,000 words, and a smaller piece entitled thus: THE WAY AND ITS ADEPTS:A PARTIAL, SLIGHTLY JIVE RECASTING OF STEPHEN MITCHELL’S TAO TE CHING. That one is good fun. Wise silliness.
A few years ago, I went on a poetry binge and generated a body of over 75 poems, which is stashed on AllPoetry.com. Any poem can be uploaded to AllPoetry, but the site is designed primarily as a big pool of contests, each of which provides a prompt (theme, style, subject, etc.) to inspire submissions. So this is largely what I would call minor poetry (as opposed to the MAJOR poetry which I have submitted unsuccessfully to art/lit journals over the years, lol). Oh, I had some poems published in a rad zine called Muse, too.
Blogging is fun. I enjoy seeking out writing prompts and participating in linkups to inspire posts. My first blog started as a book review project, and I wrote a few reviews. My reviews are more like book reports, though. Long and detailed. Like this bio. It’s a problem. I can’t seem to help it.
Enough for now. Maybe I’ll add more in time. Long story short, I’m a writer. Like most writers, I crave readers. Thank you for reading this. I hope that you will make your presence known in some way on one of my pages. I’m big on reciprocity, so if I notice a ‘like’ or ‘follow’, reply or comment, I do my best to return the kindness. Plus, I’m a reader too, so I’m always on the lookout for new words to consume.
Okay. Thanks again. See you ’round the playground.
Word Florilegium 