Judy Sandra is a novelist, journalist and musician. For most of her life, she has worked in publishing, the arts and media. In January 2010 her literary novel The Metal Girl was released by JSM Books. She covers communications and culture at JS Media Blog, writes about film for Moving Pictures Magazine, and has written a screenplay Something In Common. Judy's first short stories won her a prestigious "waitership" scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and she has been the recipient of a writing residency at Dorset Colony House, Dorset, Vt.
Judy began her artistic life as a visual artist, for a time attended professional art college and worked in fashion as a sweater designer. Following an innate instinct for the written word, she returned to school to study English and creative writing.
Working part time as an FM announcer at a small commercial radio station, she attended UWW/Skidmore College, where she received a BA in English and studied fiction with bestselling novelist and medievalist John Gardner (Grendel, October Light,) who became a mentor and friend. About her work he wrote that she was "one of the best I've encountered in teaching" and believed she had the potential to become a major American voice. As he was one of those himself at the time, this seemed a reasonably auspicious beginning.
She then moved to New York City, where she began to work in magazine publishing at Psychology Today. That fall she entered the graduate program in creative writing at The City College of New York (CCNY), City University of New York (CUNY) and shortly thereafter discovered that she and the head of her department had the same literary agent. This, actually, was not a good thing. She soon joined the staff of TIME, where she worked for the next eight years, and continued to put herself through graduate school. She earned her M.A. in fiction under the tutelage of Donald Barthelme, the post-modernist New Yorker short story writer, who encouraged her enthusiastically and nurtured the beginnings of her first novel The Hero.
She subsequently lost the agent for lack of story sales, and spent the next three years discovering her authentic writing voice. She also stopped trying to write those unsellable short stories after another seasoned and brutally honest novelist said that her head was "much too complicated for short stories". Because this was absolutely true.
Eight years after graduate school, Judy was mercifully introduced to the brilliant novelist, playwright, translator, visual artist and co-founder of the venerable Chelsea Magazine--Ursule Molinaro--and joined the private fiction class that she held in her East Village apartment. Molinaro has had a profound influence on Judy's work, and it was during this invaluable class experience that she wrote her entire second novel, The Metal Girl. She has dedicated the novel to the memory of Ursule Molinaro*, who taught Ms. Sandra nearly everything she knows about writing fiction and, probably, about life.
Judy Sandra has read her poetry and fiction at the New York Public Library reading series and at various venues throughout the New York City metropolitan area. Portions of The Metal Girl were read at the original Dixon Place on the Bowery. In addition, Ms. Sandra is an accomplished singer/songwriter and composer. Judy Sandra currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
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* For a wonderful mini-biography of Ursule Molinaro, see novelist Bruce Benderson's article in the Spring 2002 issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction.
