CJ Calamari is a New York based writer. His writing explores how the contemporary coming-of-age story has been altered by the dismantling of American mythology and the death of the American Dream through a queer, working-class lens. His writing has been published in Stonesthrow Review, Santa Clara Review, The MacGuffin, and others, and he was a finalist for the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival 2024 Poetry Contest. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Stony Brook University.