Write Now With Joe Jiménez

Who are you?

I’m Joe Jiménez. I’m a Leo who loves barbecue, drag queens, and unsweet iced tea. For twenty years I’ve worked as a high school English teacher. I currently live in San Antonio, Texas, with my partner and our two rescue Boxers, Harper Lynn and Sweet Baby Ray. I grew up in small-town South Texas and moved to LA after graduation to study English and Creative Writing. My vibe is big sky, basketball shorts, dog walks, gym, circuit music, meditation stones, late nights with my best friends, and of course bacon and egg tacos.

What do you write?

My experience is mostly in poetry and fiction. My most recent book is Hot Boy Summer, a young adult novel about four bffs from San Antonio—Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy—all joining together the summer before their Senior Year to bond over breakfast tacos, pop music remixes, and their mutual love of the iconic Ariana Grande and international drag superstar Valentina. It’s giving very high school friends group drama, with explosive group chats, excessive hashtags, and a character fluent in the art of keeping receipts.

I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be a writer. However, when I moved to LA to study at Pomona College in Claremont, California, I kind of a lot fell in love with other people’s writings, and because I enjoyed talking about characters and tensions and both big and small ideas in books, I started writing. I felt I had something to contribute to the great conversation that happens in the world when people talk about books and movies and tv shows and how they connect to our lives. So, yes, I enjoy writing, a lot in fact—especially making characters and building scenes with all the forces and factors of the world acting upon them in ways that I hope resonate with readers like and unlike these characters.

In regards to themes in my writing, I feel fairly comfortable working with emotions I’ve known in my life, however, I’ve tried staying away from purely autobiographical events and experiences for now.