A.Z. McCoy Biography

Lived most of my life in the Mid-Atlantic (PA and VA) . I enjoy a competitive game of chess. My favorite writers are Dostoevsky, David Foster Wallace, Kundera, Joyce, Carver, Atwood, and Julian Barnes, to name a few. Regarding film: Kubrick and Tarkovsky. Roy Andersson, Bunuel, P.T. Anderson, and Bergman too. From Fellini's 8 1/2 to Spike Lee joints to Jarmusch's vignettes. It seems the world is moving to a sadder and sadder fate but I believe that it's for us to choose our subjective positions, without relinquishing our minds to a cultural decay that warps and destroys any true meaning. I majored in history. Favorite philosophers include: Kierkegaard, Sartre, Jesus Christ, Jean Baudrillard, Plato, Locke, Emerson, Gautama Buddha, and Nietzsche- a mixed bag, for sure. I'm somewhat trained in fiction and screenwriting from undergrad, largely learning and reading on my own, yet to produce anything of value in these mediums, the fact of which haunts me and keeps my fingers fevered spidering keys. I have a less-than-an-ideal ear for poetry but am trying to learn and feel it out. My favorite poets include Ondaatje, Hart Crane, Arseniy Tarkovsky, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Whitman, Angelou, Ginsberg, Dickey, Eliot, Pound, Blake, and Gibran. I've worked many jobs: film projectionist during and after college; avionics software tester/engineer, which took me to Buenos Aires for a bit; cabdriver (I like to call this 'cabbiteer') : pest exterminator; home renovator. I work jobs that afford me the time to write but more and more I realize life will be difficult without a 'career' on my CV/resume. So it goes. Sacrifices are necessary and embraced. Best of luck to you, reader, wherever you might be.