Johnny Allina

At the tender age of seven, I was traumatized by not only bad parenting but an over consumption of sweets, my father running the North American operations of Pez candy. I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth on Park Avenue and raised by partially suicidal European eccentrics. Once the money was gone, the lot of us became unglued in different ways. I parlayed a John Donne essay into a scholarship at coveted Bennington College, where I went on to associate with more upper class, anxiety-ridden, somewhat suicidal, vicious eccentrics. Having navigated all aspects of bad behavior from Park Avenue, a small village in rural Vermont, a series of low- to medium-level odd jobs, stint at the Andy Warhol Foundation and ultimately to TV commercial extra work, I’ve turned these experiences into short stories.