Biography

Charles Israel, Jr. is a writer who teaches. Charles writes flash fiction, traditional short stories, and lyric poems. If he’s captivated by a character, he writes flash or stories; if language is driving his imagination, he writes poems. Before he started teaching, Charles worked as a journalist. He was an indexer at National Geographic, a staff writer for The Elkin Tribune, and a copy boy for The Columbia Record.

When he’s not writing or teaching, he’s working out, playing tennis, and riding his red bicycle around town. He lives in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte with his wife, Leslie McCray. His daughter, Elizabeth Israel, lives in Brooklyn.

Charles’s poetry chapbook, Stacking Weather, won the Flip Kelly Award from Amsterdam Press. His flash fiction, short stories, and poems have appeared in national journals such as The Cortland Review, Field, Crazyhorse, Zone 3, Pembroke Magazine, Eleven Eleven, Nimrod International Journal, North Carolina Literary Review, South Carolina Review, Waccamaw Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.