John Paul “JP” Infante is an award-winning writer, educator and Borough of Manhattan Community College alumnus from New York City. He has worked as a special education, creative writing, and English teacher for seven years – teaching at Beacon High School, Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School, and at the High School for Health Careers and Science where he received the Instructional Lead Teacher Award. JP has taught creative writing at Lehman College of The City University of New York where he served as an Adjunct Professor. JP has led assorted writing workshops and published prose and poetry widely, including the Manhattan Times, Rigorous: A Journal for People of Color, Dominican Writers, Kweli Journal, the Acentos Review and many other publications. JP has received writing awards, including the Pen America Robert J. Day Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the Bernard L. Einbond Memorial Prize for Fiction and won the 2020 Thirsty West Publishing Chapbook Contest and DTM Magazine’s “Latino Identity in the US” essay contest. He’s received writing grants from the NY State Summer Writers Institute and the Northern Manhattan Artists Alliance.

JP holds a Masters of Science in Teaching Urban Adolescents with Disabilities from Long Island University, a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction Creative Writing from The New School, and a Bachelors of Arts in Cross-Cultural Literature and Creative Writing from Lehman College of the City University of New York. JP is the founder of the Sneaker Talk Club, a men’s group in Washington Heights, that builds community by celebrating and reimagining masculinity.