To help out with the blog posting in these parts, we at The Journal have decided to bring in some new blood: Mr. Michael Pecchio. I met Michael at the OSU MFA Program’s open house, and I can tell you he’s a fine gent, as well as a fiction writer, who comes to us via UC Santa Barbara. I’m proud to present Michael Pecchio, in his own words:

Since I’ll be posting occasionally, as well as working on the blog behind the scenes, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m an incoming Creative Writing MFA student, as well as the new assistant online editor for The Journal.

I’m in a funny position now, a couple months before my move to Columbus, Ohio, for grad school: I serve burgers and bus tables all day in Hollywood, California, and then go home and picture snow storms—what they’re like to drive in, dress for, live with. What it’s like to be unable to wear sandals. What it’s like to use the word storm as a verb (e.g. “You think it’ll storm tonight?”). I saw a YouTube video of people sauntering through the Oval at OSU without sharing looks of astonishment at all the ice falling from the sky, and wondered how I’d fit in.

But, stylistically, I think I’ll settle in well at The Journal. I read with the same eye for clarity and craft that The Journal’s title, for its lack of frills, suggests. Like everyone else here, I will try to see the beautiful and trite in every submission with equal camaraderie. I like reading and talking about literature (especially of the 19th-century Russian variety…sorry English majors), and I’m working on a semi-autobiographical novel-in-stories that I can’t seem to finish. For a little while yet, I live with my cat in Studio City. She says hello, and so do I.