Calvin Gimpelevich

Calvin Gimpelevich is a writer whose fiction has appeared in Plentitude, THEM, Cream City, Jonathan, and The Collection: Short Fiction From The Transgender Vanguard. He has supported himself as a massage therapist, teacher, waiter, grant writer, social worker, production assistant, ditch digger, model, and chef. He was born in San Francisco.

Calvin Gimpelevich received 2016 GAP funding for Tenderloin, which is a multi-perspective novel that takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the turbulent 70s, to a fictionalized election year in the present. The novel explores how we construct identities—in movements, in cities, and in self. It explores the difference between reality and presentation in, for example, the gap between the mythology around San Francisco, and what it is like to actually live in that place. It strives to give historical context for the activism of the present, exploring the impact of 1960s and 70s activism on all sides of the modern political spectrum.