"Hi! My name is Jonah. I’m a fiction writer who likes to inspire and guide students on how to get them as close as possible to their unique voice. I enjoy helping students exchange doubts with confidence by illuminating their strengths. This is bolstered by my kindling their thoughts and curiosity through conversations, questions, and exercises. What’s shaped a large part of my ethos is that I was a carpenter who built music studios before I started Community college in 2014, and that’s where I discovered my love for writing. I had English professors there who gave me positive reinforcement to pursue fiction even though I had never written more than 500 words. They did so by asking specific questions about each piece of literature we read and what stood out to me, and validating my curiosity by entertaining any questions I had. This is important because there are no wrong questions, and I like to give this kind of forum to my students as it allows for so much discovery for them in their writing. With this fundamental baseline, this helped me on my path to transfer to Amherst College, where I graduated in 2019, and then, to be accepted at Syracuse University for an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Syracuse University where I graduated in 2022.

I began teaching college students from ages seventeen to twenty-three in the fall of 2020, online due to the pandemic at Syracuse University. I taught courses including Introduction to Creative Writing, Nonfiction Creative Writing Workshop, First-Year College Composition, and Second-Year College Composition. Eventually, I taught both the creative writing courses and composition courses in person when restrictions lifted. I taught Introduction to Creative Writing and First Year Composition at Ithaca College through the 2022-2023 school year. At the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, I taught Modernism and Science Fiction. It sadly closed in 2024. In all, I’ve taught a dozen writing courses at the University level with eight to twenty students in each course." less...