Writer | Billy Lombardo | United States

official website of chicago author, billy lombardo

Fiction Workshop for Young Writers (9th-12th grade)

classes run on thursdays, July 2-30

• 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

H.O.F (Hall of Fame, Hemingway, O'Connor, & Faulkner

morning will come today!

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

pre-sale! order now!

click image for Alan cheuse's review on npr

click image for Donna Seaman interview on wbez

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.

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.