(3rd) Umberto Tosi

Umberto Tosi bends towards magic realism in his storytelling. Perhaps that's from having grown devouring science and speculative fiction. Nevertheless, he came to fiction writing later in life after a career as a journalist. His most recent opus is Ophelia Rising, a speculative historical epic on the life of Shakespeare's fair maiden before and after Hamlet. His fiction transforms remembrances from a rich life into surreal, often satirical adventures; bending memes, tropes and cherished assumptions to the odd perceptions of his memorably obsessed characters.

His electronic and print works include Our Own Kind, Milagro on 34th Street, High Treason (Putnam), Satan, the Movie, Elvis and Marilyn Have Left the Building, Sport Psyching (J.P. Tarcher) and Gunning for the Holy Ghost. 

He has penned scores of short stories as well as hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers in the United States. He is currently a contributing editor of Chicago Quarterly Review. He joined Authors Electric in May, 2015.

During the 1980s and 90s, he performed with improv comedy groups in San Francisco, honing techniques he has taken into his writing. 

Born in Boston, he went to school in Los Angeles, and grew up bi-coastal as the son of an opera singer. He lived and worked in Los Angeles, where he was senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, then in San Francisco as a writer and an editor (San Francisco Magazine, City, Forbes, MightyWords)  for many years before moving to Chicago in 2011, where he is in a relationship with narrative surrealist Eleanor Spiess-Ferris. He has three daughters, a son, nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren.