Joe Cocchiarelli (born July 31, 1950) is an American author, academician, and columnist. His published works range from fiction, non-fiction, essays, and social-political commentary. After his stint as an editorial assistant to Ralph Carlson, editor-in-chief at Garland Publishing, he helped prepare the final edition of Hans Walter Gabler’s definitive edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses; there his former colleague, Marie Ellen Larcada, Academic Editor, proved resourceful. Within six years, Larcada published his first work, Screen Sleuths, 1992: A Filmography, with Essays on Crime Film from the Talkies until the early 21st century. While working as a teacher in the New York City Board of Education, he spent his summers completing his first novel, Ghost Song (2005), a historical narrative about the Beowulf poet and how he came to compose the Old English epic poem. That novel was finally rejected by Simon & Schuster in 2003 for not being “anti-Catholic enough.” After relocating to South Carolina in 2015, he contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and underwent chemotherapy. While recuperating, Cocchiarelli developed his cancer journal, Still Life with Cats, 2021. His first collection of short stories, Talking Pictures: Stories Inspired by the Masterworks of Edward Hopper, was published in 2024 with great fanfare from Mike Briggs’ podcast, Briggs on Books. The discussion focused on how these short stories attempt to reinvent narrative style for short fiction. Cocchiarelli's essays on cultural and political topics appear regularly in BruTimes.com, the online Indian journal of politics, culture, and sports.

Early Life

Cocchiarelli was born in 1950 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the son of Mary Iannace Cocchiarelli and Joseph Paul Cocchiarelli, an importer of international foods and wines. The author’s grandfather, Don Giovanni Cocchiarelli, was among the last of the industrialists to be knighted by the House of Savoy before their unfortunate alliance with Mussolini led to that dynasty’s permanent banishment from Italy. He is a graduate of Bishop Loughlin Memorial HS in Clinton Hill, NY. He received a BA from Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY, 1972; an MA in English Literature from Fordham University, 1974; an MA in 18th Century Literature from Queen Mary College, Univ. of London, 1975; and his PhD in Medieval Studies from Fordham University, Bronx, NY, 1986. His early short fiction was mentored by Edmund White and Edward Albee. When one of his stories caught the attention of Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's mother, Letty Grierson, she submitted “I See Her All the Time” to the short fiction editor at The New Yorker. Upon its rejection, the setback only inspired him to continue writing in a more suitable style as originally recommended by Albee. The new version, New York Movie, reflects both Albee’s criticism as well as Dawn Powell’s formula in The Golden Spur, where an aging author revives her earlier stories by telling them from an opposite point of view. In his revisions for TALKING PICTURES, Cocchiarell sought to personalize the narratives through the use of fictional characters from Hopper paintings who somehow get mixed up with acquaintances and events in real time.

Education

Cocchiarelli’s decision to complete his doctorate in Medieval Studies came about ironically after he had turned down an earlier invitation by Sir Frank Kermode at Univ. College, London, to do an MA in Old English instead of 18th Century British Literature. Years later, after studying Old French with Prof. Jeanette Beer, an Oxford luminary invited to develop the Medieval Studies Program at Fordham, he transferred to her department and began studying Old English Literature with Prof. James W. Earl instead.

For his doctoral thesis, Dr. Earl guided him toward his personalized approach to dissertation writing: finding an important text that needed to be translated and writing a commentary. Cocchiarelli chose to do a translation of the Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang, a late Carolingian text written for the reform of cathedral canons plagued by sexual and financial scandal in the leading cathedral chapters of France. This academic history, along with his growing interest in genealogical studies, led to the completion of his novel, Ghost Song. Within six years of completing the doctorate, he was determined to set the record straight on how the Beowulf poet composed the Old English epic poem. Iconoclastically, Cocchiarelli sets the novel in the penultimate stage of the collapse of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Most scholars insisted on an earlier, pre-Christian date. Toward the end of the novel's completion in the late '90s, a professor of linguistics at the University of Essex proved that the poet’s diction pointed to a late 10th-century date after all, proving Cocchiarelli’s intuitive choice right after all.

Genealogical Research

The author's academic and literary journey was further renewed by his discovery of his ancestry from two of the most decidedly antithetical figures in medieval history. His maternal grandfather was a direct descendant of the last Emir to rule Palermo before the Normans overthrew Muslim rule ca. 1070 AD. Their family name, Saglimbene, or in its Arabic form, Ibn Salim م ن, was the oldest African-Muslim name in Sicily. Within 100 years of Muslim rule, Southern Italy's greatest historian and a direct descendant of Emir Hasan al-Samsam, Fra Salimbene, became chief historian for the Franciscans and chronicler for the current Holy Roman Emperor. Also Astoundingly, Cocchiarelli’s maternal grandmother is descended from the Sephardic Jewish family that organized the resistance to the British-backed unification of Italy. On his paternal grandparent's side, his father's mother was descended from the Cioffis; their Viking presence in Southern Italy, presumably after the Second or Third Crusade, established that family name there. Along with their fellow Norman crusader-settlers, these Scandinavian transplants to Southern Italy established a stronghold in Avellino to fortify a late Roman settlement, Cervinara, or “the place overrun by deer,” where both sides of Cocchiarelli’s paternal ancestors flourished until they emigrated to New York. His particular clan name, Cioffi, is among the oldest Danish names recorded in the Venerable Bede's History of the English Church and People. His maternal ancestors settled mainly in the New York area; however, his maternal grandmother’s uncle fled to Louisiana after Southern Italy was overrun by the House of Savoy in 1860. His great uncle, Garmine Saglimbene, died fighting for the Confederacy at Vicksburg.

Personal Life

It was only during an interview for the John Jay College newspaper, the Sentinel, that one of his students, a Yemeni immigrant, Ahmed Souleyini, prompted him to recall the most astounding change he had experienced after retiring from high school teaching to join the English Dept. at John Jay CUNY. To Coccharelli’s amazement, it took Ahmed two semesters of Medieval-Early Renaissance Lit. to master Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. His pointed question—“Why didn’t you go on to teach college English after receiving your doctorate?”—helped Cocchiarelli recollect that he was first inspired by rejection letters from mostly mediocre institutions before he decided to make the instruction of adolescents his life’s work. At the time of his joining the faculty at John Jay CUNY, Brooklyn Technical HS, formerly one of the most outstanding schools in the city system, had declined both in faculty and the quality of its student body. Cocchiarelli ribbed the young Yemeni reporter, “I went from teaching some of the brightest ‘sociopaths”, to perhaps less gifted but much more appreciative students right here in the shadow of the Metropolitan Opera. Cocchiarelli had no regrets about the course his life took and his amazing former students, many future scholars at the Univ. of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and MIT to mention a few, whom he had the honor of having taught. It more than made up for his greatest failure, the disgraced governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, whom Cocchiarelli taught as a freshman at Fordham College. After retiring from CUNY in 2010, he relocated to South Carolina and lives in a lakeside home with his son and chief editor, Hosea, and their menagerie, a blue-tipped beagle hound and four cats.

Relations

Son: Hosea Inman Cocchiarelli
Sister: Maria C. Berger (Curator-Director, The Museum of Friends, Gardner, CO)
Great uncle: Salvatore Cioffi, aka The Venerable Lokanatha

Published Works:

• SCREEN SLEUTHS, Garland/Taylor Francis, NY & London, 1992 (revised paperback 2019) GHOST SONG, 2019
• STILL LIFE with CATS, 2021
• TALKING PICTURES, 2024.

Works in Progress

• The Collected Essays of Joe Cocchiarelli, July 2025
• THE NIGHT WATCH or ERASING REMBRANDT A Novel due out Oct. 2025

Articles:

• A Mission to India: The author recalls his great uncle, the Italian-Buddhist Saint, The Venerable Lokanatha.
• How Trump REALLY Won the Election and Why It’s Important for India”
• Shakespeare Wallah: A new approach to Shakespeare, in honor of Madhur Jaffrey.