Harold Jaffe (July 8, 1938 – June 23, 2024) was an American writer of novels, short fiction, drama, and essays. He was the author of 30 books, including 14 collections of fiction, four novels, and two volumes of essays. He was also the editor of the literary-cultural journal Fiction International. He had won two NEA grants in fiction and two

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

fellowships. His works have been translated into 15 languages, including German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. Jaffe was also a Professor of

Creative Writing Creative writing is any writing that goes beyond the boundaries of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on craft and technique, such as narrative structure, character ...

, English, and

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. Jaffe died on June 23, 2024, at the age of 85. Jaffe's fiction has appeared in such journals as ''Mississippi Review''; ''City Lights Review''; ''Paris Review''; ''New Directions in Prose and Poetry''; ''Chicago Review''; ''Chelsea''; ''Fiction''; ''Central Park''; ''Witness''; ''Black Ice''; ''Minnesota Review''; ''Boundary 2''; ''ACM''; ''Black Warrior Review''; ''Cream City Review''; ''Two Girls’ Review''; and ''New Novel Review''. His fictions have also been anthologized in Pushcart Prize; Best American Stories; Best of American Humor; ''Storming the Reality Studio''; ''American Mad''e; ''Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation''; ''After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology''; ''Bateria'' and ''Am Lit'' (Germany); ''Borderlands'' (Mexico); ''Praz'' (Italy); ''Positive'' (Japan); and elsewhere. The 2004 issue of ''The Journal of Experimental Fiction called'' “The Literary Terrorism of Harold Jaffe” was devoted to his writings. Jaffe was well known for his technique of docufiction, a literary form that treats and fictionalizes news reports and other published data to expose their philosophical underpinnings, ambiguities, nuances, and hidden agendas. In addition to Docufiction, both Guerilla Writing and Unsituated Dialogue were literary terms Jaffe created..

Works

Novels

* ''Mole's Pity'' (1979) * ''Dos Indios'' (1983) * ''Othello Blues'' (1996) * ''Jesus Coyote'' (2008) * ''Brando Bleeds'' (2022)

Docufiction collections

* ''Son of Sam'' (2001) * ''False Positive'' (2002) * ''Nazis, Sharks & Serial Killers'' (2003) * ''15 Serial Killers'' (2003) * ''Terror-Dot-Gov'' (2005) * ''Paris 60'' (2010) * ''Anti-Twitter'' (2010) * ''OD'' (2012) * ''Induced Coma'' (2014) * ''Death Cafe'' (2015) * ''Goosestep'' (2016) * ''Sacred Outcast'' (2017) * ''Porn-anti-Porn'' (2019) * ''Brut: Writings on Art & Artists'' (2021) * ''Performances for the End of Time'' (2022) * ''Kafka Kafka'' (2024) * ''The Infected Desert'' (2024)

Fiction collections

* ''Mourning Crazy Horse'' (1982) * ''Beasts'' (1986) * ''Madonna and Other Spectacles'' (1988) * ''Eros Anti-Eros'' (1990) * ''Straight Razor'' (1995) * ''Sex for the Millennium'' (1999) * ''Strange Fruit & Other Plays'' (2021) * ''Sacrifice'' (2022) * ''Single-Sentence Stories'' (with Tom Whalen) (2023)

Essay collections

* ''Beyond the Techno-Cave: A Guerrilla Writer’s Guide to Post-Millennial Culture'' (2006) * ''Revolutionary Brain'' (2012)

References

External links

Jaffe's Wordpress site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jaffe, Harold 1938 births 2024 deaths American magazine editors American academics of English literature San Diego State University faculty American male essayists American male novelists American male short story writers 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers 20th-century American essayists 21st-century American essayists 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers Grinnell College alumni New York University alumni