Jim Provenzano - bio

I'm currently the Assistant Arts Editor at the Bay Area Reporter. I also edit the monthly nightlife magazine, BARtab SF.

From 1996-2006, Sports Complex was the Bay Area Reporter column focusing on the LGBT athletics movement. It's been syndicated since 2004 by Q Syndicate. Publications that carry Sports Complex include Baltimore OutLoud, Camp Rehobeth, Camp Kentucky, the Dallas Voice, South Africa's GMax, In Newsweekly, Lavender Magazine, OutUK.com, Pride Source, Seattle Gay News, and the Windy City Times.

Since 1996, my Sports Complex articles and photos have been published weekly in the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, one of the world's longest running LGBT publications.

From my knowledge of the Northern California sports community, in 2004 I was asked to guest curate Sporting Life: GLBT Athletics and Cultural Change From the 1960s to Today, the world's first exhibit focusing on the gay sports community. It was extended through 2006, and is on display at the GLBT Historical Society, home of the largest such archive in the world.

I've also spoken at many panels and conferences, including the 2005 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Convention, and as a co-keynote speaker at the University of Florida's Children's Literature conference.

PINS was my first novel, published in 1999. Completely self-published, it became a surprising hit, has been included on the curriculum reading list at almost a dozen universities, selected by InSightOut Books as a featured book, and is nearly out of print. Bookstores can purchase copies wholesale via my preferred small press dealer, Alamo Square Distributors.

In 2002 San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center commissioned my stage adaptation of PINS, which won acclaim and a Bay Area Critics award. Chicago's Bailiwick Theatre Company produced PINS in summer 2006.

In 2003, PINS was translated into German and published by Bruno Gmunder as Wrestling Team. I also published my second novel, Monkey Suits.

In other fiction and nonfiction short stories, I've had over 20 works published in various anthologies. In 1997 I received a Master of Arts in English/Creative writing from San Francisco State University. I also received a 1995 certificate from Scuola Leonardo da Vinci in Florence for intensive Italian language and culture studies.

Before writing Sports Complex, I was a fulltime assistant editor at the Bay Area Reporter, covering arts and news, copyediting, and editing the arts calendar.

I also worked for a time at Gay.net, the precursor to Gay.com in 1997-8, and in 2000 as a Senior Writer for PlanetOut, writing arts, celebrity interviews, and events features.

Other publications I've done freelance work for include The Advocate, The San Francisco Sentinel, High Performance, Frontiers, POZ, Wilde, and Cross Currents.

I got my start in news/arts writing at the revolutionary OutWeek Magazine. From 1989-1991, I worked as assistant to Publisher Kendall Morrison, doing everything from supervising the installation of an air conditioning system to buying office supplies. My first editors and coworkers included an impressive list of writers and editors who went on to other success. At the time, like many others, I was a member of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power.

In the 1980s, before that, I was a dancer and performance artist, performing with Billy Cratty, Steve Gross, and several downtown New York pick-up companies. I created many small-scale dance and performance works, including a 1988 musical set in the World Trade Center's PATH station. I also composed music scores and wrote monologues for various dance companies and performers.

Before moving back to NYC, I also spent a year in Pittsburgh with the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, and created and directed several theatre, performance and video works.

While getting a BFA from Ohio State University in Dance, I toured Ohio with two student dance companies. I also attended Kent State University for two years, and won summer scholarships with the Dayton Ballet, Bill Evans residency at Meadville College, Kent State's Porthouse Theatre at Blossom Music Center, and Bowling Green University's Huron Playhouse.

Born in New York City, and raised in Ohio, I now live in San Francisco.

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