Justin Hamm

About Me

I'm a poet and fiction writer originally from the flatlands of central Illinois--the backdrop for a lot of my work--but now living and writing near Mark Twain territory in Missouri. I earned my MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and my work has appeared or is forthcoming in number of print and web publications.

I'm also the author of the chapbook Illinois, My Apologies, available now from RockSaw Press, and I'm the founding editor of the museum of americana, which you can find here: http://themuseumofamericana.wordpress.com/

Why do you write?

Well, I'm not making any money at it, and it doesn't make me better looking or earn me a second vote on election day. So I guess I must put words on paper out of that primitive human need to express myself. For a couple of years, I got to see first hand what my life would be like if I didn't meet that need, if I played bingo or flew model airplanes to pass the time, and I saw that I couldn't live that way.

Any favorite authors? Books?

All of Us, Raymond Carver; anything by Linda Pastan or Jim Harrison; American Gods, Neil Gaiman; Confessions, Saint Augustine; The Brothers Karamazov; The Watch, Rick Bass; The World According to Garp, John Irving; Don Quixote; Poetry 180; North of Boston, Robert Frost; Big Bad Love, Larry Brown; Deadwood, Pete Dexter; Chronicles Vol. 1, Bob Dylan; A Little History of the World, E.H. Gombrich; Six Centuries of English Verse; Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; The Nibelungenlied; Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen; The Godfather; Flying at Night, Ted Kooser; Bound for Glory, Woody Guthrie.