Dennis James Bartel

Dennis James Bartel, aka DJB, is an award-winning novelist and journalist, born and raised in Los Angeles. A USC undergrad, he earned a Master's degrees in writing at UC, Irvine and a Master's in English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught writing. He later taught at Johns Hopkins University.

Michael Chabon, 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner, described Bartel's first book, Voyeurs, as "stories in the classic manner, scale models of a world that is both peculiarly Bartel's and a dead ringer for our own, replete with the flawed, pathetic, lost and yearning characters, at once drowning and exulting in life's ironies, who populate the tales of the modern masters of the form. His style has the sunny, effortless air of true literary art, casting sharp and profound shadows."

Bartel's novel High'd Up was published in 2015 and received a Pulitzer nomination. Bartel has also published hundreds of stories, essays, and articles with Harper's, Hustler, Time-Life, Doubleday, Paris Today, Chamber Music, Mississippi Valley Review, Windsor Review, Aji, and many magazines & newspapers, inc. Moscow Times (Russia, not Idaho), and Baltimore Sun, for which he reported from Israel. Bartel earned a top press club prize for his investigative reporting of contract killers, and served as one of two commentators for ABC.com's coverage of Princess Di's funeral.

DJB is also known as one of the preeminent classical music broadcasters of the past quarter century, working for radio stations in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore & Pittsburgh.