About
Jim Beane's five riveting tales of the Eastern seashore depict the elemental beauty and terror of of salt air and wild water and its impact on the harsh, often stormy lives of coastal dwellers who fish the sea, service boats, surf breakers and work in the building trades. "Across the Bay" explores class divisions between long-time locals and summer residents, the "richies," in the wake of a devastating storm. In "Fragile," a young fisherman befriends a hapless, grieving older man. "Before the Storm" explores the difficult relationship of two brothers, one of whom is seriously ill. "Ocean View" is the sometimes hilarious saga of conflict between local and immigrant workers at a sea-side construction site. In "The Rising Tide," an older, long-married couple lose their car keys in the sand and rediscover each other. Jim Beane lives west of Baltimore, Maryland with his wife Mary Ellen and their dog Lily. He splits time between family, writing and paying back to the writing community. Two daughters, their husbands and two grandsons live close by. Jim is a workshop leader in creative fiction at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland and a mentor for the Veteran's Writing Project. During Spring, 2019, he will work with the Armed Services Arts Partnership and the Writer's Center to help reintegrate Veterans into their communities through their participation in the arts. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in the 2017 Tillie Olsen Award-winning anthology, Worker's Write: Tales from the Construction Site. He is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow and still active in a writing critique group formed twenty years ago. He has judged a short fiction contest and been a featured speaker on short fiction at the Second Saturday Lecture Series in Hyattsville, Maryland. His stories have appeared in numerous publications including the Baltimore Review, the Potomac Review, the Long Story, DC Noir, Spank the Carp, Scribble and O-Dark-Thirty. His short story collection, ALMOST MEN: stories, is seeking a home. Currently, he is working on his novel GALILEE, a thriller coming-of-age story set in the mid-Atlantic and several new stories he hopes to add to a second collection.