official website of chicago author, billy lombardo
Fiction Workshop for Young Writers (9th-12th grade)

classes run on thursdays, July 2-30
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• weekly zoom sessions
• read like a writer story discussions
• idea generation exercise
• weekly writing exercises
• small group workshops
• features of fiction discussions
• opportunity to have your work included in billy's book on craft: House of Fiction Deconstructed for the Apprentice Writer
• line-by-line edit of your story
• sign up by 6/21 for guaranteed spot

get a copy of
morning will come today!
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why i write
Somewhere in the middle 70s, a girl named Gia appeared like a miracle in Bridgeport. No one but billy remembers anything about her. Anyway, billy wrote her a poem called A Dream, A Ring, and a Memory. Go on and laugh, but romantics and literati alike agree that it was a sonically interesting title. And that poem—that cry of love—was a naming of the thing within.
Also, there was a nun who called him a cub reporter. That was also something.
Several other things happened.
And then there was the Green Mill and the Poetry Slam. It was strange to hear poetry in bars back then. The patrons snapped their fingers, stomped their feet, and groaned poets and other crazy people off the stage if they didn’t like what they heard.
O, but if they liked what was happening up there it got so quiet you could hear cigarette ashes fall (those were the days of smoking in bars), and sometimes they cheered so like hell that you couldn't look anyone in the eye, for fear of it ending.
That only has to happen once before you want it to happen every minute of your life.
billy's books
billy's books
morning will come
Re-issued, re-titled, re-edited re-beautifully jacketed version of How to Hold a Woman, published by Tortoise Books, and launching in January, 2020
The Logic of a Rose:
Chicago Stories
published in 2005, this little baby of mine won the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction and was published by BkMk Press.
The Man With Two Arms
the seed of this one began on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, FL, when my son Kane had a catch with me wearing a lefty glove. The penultimate scene was inspired by 9/11.
Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns
It all began for me on the stage of the Green Mill's Uptown Poetry Slam with the poems and prose in this baby. Pieces like "Joyful Mysteries" and "The Last Tree on Paper Route #32," "Poem for Lenard Clark" and "My Father is an Excellent Dog."
billy's bio
billy is the author of three books of fiction – The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, The Man with Two Arms, and Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns.
His novel, How to Hold a Woman will be re-issued by Tortoise Books as Morning Will Come in January 2021.
billy's most recent work has been published in Hypertext Magazine, Ireland’s HCE Review, The Tishman Review, Tikkun Magazine, The Chicago Reader, The Chicago Tribune, and Triquarterly. billy is the 2011 Nelson Algren Award winner for Fiction.
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A revered high school English Literature and creative writing teacher for 25 years at The Latin School of Chicago, and for nine years at other Chicago-area high schools, he now runs his own writing and editing business called Writing Pros/e.
billy is the founder and managing editor of Polyphony Lit, a global literary platform for high school writers and editors, at the core of which is a literary magazine run by an international staff of more than 200 high school editors around the world who comment on every one of the thousands of submissions that come to us every year (2,706 in 2019) from more than 70 countries so far.
A dynamic speaker and performer, billy has presented and performed at more than 300 high schools, universities, and literary events since 1989. billy lives in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood with his partner, Amy Danzer and their dog, Valentino.
He is currently at work on a book on the craft of fiction:
House of Fiction, Deconstructed for the Apprentice Writer.
events
1/25/20
morning will come book launch

2/8/20
boswell's books, milwaukee, wi

2/16/20
sunday reading series
poetry, prose, & cocktails

3/2/20
poets' monday
linneman's riverwest inn, milwaukee, wi

1/25/20
morning will come book launch

2/8/20
boswell's books, milwaukee, wi
2/16/20
sunday reading series
poetry, prose, & cocktails

3/5/20
harold washington library w/stuart dybek, donna seaman

1/11/20
tiger room salon

1/25/20
morning will come book launch

3/12/20
the last reading on earth
w/ riley redgate
at albany park library

3/12/20
the last reading on earth
w/ riley redgate
at albany park library

contact billy
more fun stuff
house of fiction, linkedin, facebook
for the
College-Bound
​
• An argument for the modification of the personal statement for the class of 2024
april 2019

Praise for
morning will come.
• Cassidy Freeman, of The Righteous Gemstones.
• Rose City Reader
interview with billy

Creative
Clover, the 2011 Nelson Algren Award Winner

short story:
"We Were Hearing New Sounds in the Condo
