Professor Emeritus of Fiction
Office: AL-269 | Email: [email protected]

Harold Jaffe went to Grinnell College for his B.A., and received a Ph.D in Literature, with Distinction, from New York University.

Professor Jaffe is the author of 22 books: including novels, fiction and "docufiction" collections and two volumes of essays. These include Mourning Crazy Horse (1982), Dos Indios (1983),  Beasts (1986),Madonna and Other Spectacles (1988), Eros Anti-Eros (1990), Straight Razor (1995), Othello Blues(1996), Sex for the Millennium (1999), 15 Serial Killers (2003), Terror-dot-Gov (2005), Beyond the Techno-Cave: A Guerrilla Writer's Guide to Post-Millennial Culture (2006), Jesus Coyote (2008), Anti-Twitter: 150 50-Word Stories (2010), OD (2012), Revolutionary Brain (2012), and Paris 60 (2013; revised version of Paris 60, 2010). His latest works are Othello Blues, 2014 (Journal of Experimental Fiction Books) and Induced Coma: 50 & 100-Word Stories, 2014 (Anti-Oedipus Press).

Jaffe's fictions have been anthologized in Pushcart Prize, Best American Stories, Best of American Humor, Storming the Reality Studio, American Made, Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation, After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology, Bateria, Am Lit, Borderlands, Praz and Positive. His work has appeared in journals including New Directions in Prose and Poetry, City Lights Review, and elsewhere. His writings have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Farsi, French, Polish, Turkish, and Czech. He has won numerous awards, including two NEAs for fiction; a California Arts Council fellowship in fiction; a New York CAPS grant for fiction; a San Diego COMBO fellowship in fiction; two Fulbright grants to Pragueand to India; and three Pushcart Prizes in fiction. Jaffe is editor-in-chief of Fiction International. 

Harold Jaffe has published 30 volumes of fiction, “docufiction,” essays, plays, and novels, most recently Strange Fruit and Other Plays; BRUT: Writings on Art and Artists; Goosestep: Fictions; Porn-anti-Porn; Death Cafe: Fictions and Docufictions; Brando Bleeds: Novel. Recent translations of Jaffe’s books include French, Spanish, Turkish, and French.

Induced Coma

is increasingly common in medical procedures.

Patients lapsing back to real time claim it’s a sweet space.

Coma-land.

Parallel world, noiseless, zero technology.

You can hang there for a long time like Jesus without nails.

But isn’t this coma-land of yours just a degraded version of Nirvana?

Absolutely.