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 Born and raised in upstate New York, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. After graduating from Syracuse University, he taught American Literature and Advanced Composition to high school students. Three years and the Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year Award later, he set aside teaching and took up advertising. His career took him from one agency to the next until he found himself creative director of a high-profile Philadelphia shop, at which point he abandoned big agencies and founded a small one instead with his wife, Wendy. They have one daughter, Emily, a science teacher.
His first novel, Finn, was named an ALA Notable Book for 2008 and was chosen as one of the year's top novels by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Book Sense, and Amazon.com. It also won the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award and was shortlisted for both the National Book Critics Circle's first-ever Best Recommended List and the Sargent First Novel Prize.
Clinch has taught in Syracuse University's SUPA program, addressed the NCTE, lectured at the Mark Twain House and Museum, and spoken before audiences at the American Library Association, the Colgate Writers Conference, Boston University, Pennsylvania State University, and elsewhere. His short stories have appeared in the literary magazine MSS, where they were selected by the novelist John Gardner.
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