About Me

Joe Samuel Starnes is author of four books, including the novel Fall Line, which will be released in paperback by the University of Georgia Press imprint NewSouth Books in April 2026. He is coauthor of Leth Oun's life story, A Refugee's American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service, published in 2023 by Temple University Press in print and by Tantor Media as an audiobook, which was honored as a finalist in the 2024 Audie Awards. His third novel, Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel, published by Breakaway Books, was released in April 2015. His first novel, Calling, was published in 2005, and was reissued in 2014 as an e-book by Mysterious Press.com/Open Road. Starnes has had journalism appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines, as well as essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, an MA in English from Rutgers University in Newark, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. He was awarded a fellowship to the 2006 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Follow and  contact him on X @JSamuelStarnes, Facebook, or Instagram  @joesamuelstarnes.