J. J. Steinfeld

Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island (Epekwitk), where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published twenty-two books, including An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2018), Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2019), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2020), and Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2021). Over sixty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States, including the full-length plays The Franz Kafka Therapy Session, The Golden Age of Monsters, and A Television-Watching Artist; the one-act plays The Heirloom: An Evidence Play, Godot’s Leafless Tree, The Waiting Ends, The Entrance-or-Not Barroom, Freesias in Whiskey, Laugh for Sanity, Back to Back, No End in Sight, Flowers for the Vases, Sea Monsters, More Than Money, Imaginative Drinking, A Play of Disbelief, Memory Sounds, and In a Washroom of a Prestigious Art Gallery; and the audio plays In Becky's Name, A New Map, The Professor's Ashes, and Diogenes’ Lantern. A new & selected collection of Steinfeld’s Prince Edward Island stories, Acting on the Island, is forthcoming from Pottersfield Press in spring 2022. Three of the short stories in Acting on the Island, “The Heart” (The Heirloom: An Evidence Play), “Godot’s Leafless Tree” (Godot's Leafless Tree), and “Flowers for the Vases” (Flowers for the Vases), the author has adapted into one-act plays, and a fourth short story, “A Television-Watching Artist” (A Television-Watching Artist), into a two-act play.