C. J. Spataro is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Publishing programs at Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia. She was also one of the founding partners of Philadelphia Stories magazine and PS Books. Her debut novel, More Strange Than True, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press in June 2024.
C.J.’s short fiction has been awarded a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for fiction and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her long short story, “The Twi-Lite” won the Iron Horse Literary Review Fiction Trifecta and was published as an e-single.
She has been a finalist in many contests including the Larry Brown Short Story Award from Pithead Chapel, Sequestrum's Reprint Award, The Switchgrass Review, Mason’s Road, The Philadelphia City Paper, and december magazine, where she was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Awards for Fiction. In 2018 she was nominated for a “Best of the Net” award. Her work was featured three times in the InterAct Theatre Company's "Writing Aloud" series (which was Philadelphia's version of NPR's “Selected Shorts”).
As an editor, she has edited the fiction for three “Best of” Anthologies for Philadelphia Stories and edited the fiction and non-fiction for Forgotten Philadelphia and Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley.
Her work has also been included in the anthologies, Healing Visions (Matter Press 2023), Taboos & Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings (Madville Publishing 2021), Extraordinary Gifts (PS Books 2014), Another Breath (PS Books/RC Press 2014), 50 Over 50 (PS Books 2016), and Forgotten Philadelphia, Art and Writing Inspired by Philadelphia Heritage Sites (PS Books 2012). Her stories have been published in a number of literary magazines including, Exacting Clam, Sequestrum, Phantom Drift, Italian Americana, december magazine, Permafrost, The Baltimore Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. She’s had poetry published in Ovunque Siamo.
She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Music from Central Michigan University, a Master of Music from Michigan State University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College. She has taught English composition, journalism, publishing, and creative writing courses at Rutgers, Rowan, Temple, and West Chester Universities, and at Rosemont College and the Community College of Philadelphia.
C.J., or Carla as she is known by most, grew up in Michigan, which will always hold a special place in her heart. She has lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years, most of which with her partner, the artist and one-time standup comedian, Vincent Natale Martinez.