Charles Degelman
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ABOUT

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Charles Degelman is a writer, editor, and educator living in Los Angeles. He currently teaches writing and media studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

Degelman's Gates of Eden, a '60s novel of resistance, rebellion, and love, garnered a silver medal from the 2012 Independent Publishers Book Awards.

A Bowl Full of Nails, set in the counterculture of the 1970s, was a finalist in the Bellwether Competition, sponsored by Barbara Kingsolver, took bronze in the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Nails made the mystery short list for IndieFab Book of the Year Award, sponsored by Foreword Reviews.

Impressions of two trips to Cuba as a writer and theater artist have been published in Cuba by Travelers Tales. Excerpts from his anthology, American Postcards, narrative snapshots of growing up absurd in the 1950s appear in Above Ground, an anthology of international fiction.

In 2010, Degelman edited A Voice From the Planet, a globe-trotting anthology of short fiction, published by Harvard Square Editions.

His first screenplay, "Fifty-Second Street," garnered an award from the Diane Thomas Competition, sponsored by Amblin Entertainment and the UCLA Writers Program. "No Deposit, No Return," a reinhabitory thriller, is wandering the labyrinths of Hollywood.

His latest screenplay, "The Red Car," was a finalist in the American Zoetrope competition, sponsored by Francis Ford Coppola.


Facts of Life...

After graduating Harvard, Degelman left academia to become an antiwar activist, political theater artist, musician, communard, carpenter, hard-rock miner, and itinerant gypsy trucker.

When the dust settled, Degelman returned to his first love, writing. In the 1990s he was swept up by the film world and the burgeoning digital industry where he wrote and produced documentary and educational films for TNT, Churchill Films, Pyramid Films, Philips Interactive Media, and others.

A longtime theater artist, Degelman co-founded Indecent Exposure, a Los Angeles-based theater company dedicated to creating original, high-quality, socially relevant work for the stage.

He polished his craft as writer and editor on staff at a Los Angeles-based educational organization while he produced original work for the stage and wrote fiction, screenplays, and political commentary.

Degelman also had the great good fortune to study the art of fiction with John Rechy, novelist, essayist and recipient of PEN-USA-West's Lifetime Achievement Award.