Jim Zervanos was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He attended Bucknell University, where he was an Academic All-America baseball player and, upon graduation in 1992, won the William Bucknell Prize for English. After receiving his Master’s degree from Bucknell, he interned as a journalist while attending law school but settled on careers of teaching and writing fiction.
Since 1995, Zervanos has taught high school English in the suburbs of Philadelphia and recently began teaching creative writing at Drexel University. He has been a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and his short stories have appeared in numerous magazines. In 1999, Folio recognized his short story, “Church Camp,” as the journal’s best of the year.
Zervanos completed LOVE Park, his first novel, while on sabbatical in Athens, Greece.
He and his wife live in Philadelphia’s Art Museum area—not far from LOVE Park along the Ben Franklin Parkway—where the rich cultural opportunities, numerous fountains, and natural beauty give it a European ambiance.
The late Helen Papanikolas, author of The Time of the Little Black Bird, wrote of Jim Zervanos, “I have often wondered why we Greek Americans have not produced writers like the young Saul Bellow. I think we now have one.”