The Brooklyn Rail

John Domini was a devoted and hardworking writer and the most gracious of literary ambassadors, always directing his goodwill and great store of energy toward the writing community. His work navigated violent, chaotic subjects but was reliably good-humored and profoundly humane. I got to know John when I visited Iowa City’s Prairie Lights bookstore in 2015, when he invited me to dinner before the reading with him and his wife Lettie Prell. His expansive, gracious friends-are-family manner made me feel welcomed to Iowa and to his world. Over the following decade, he always made an effort to connect and stay in touch with me, as he did with so many of his fellow writers, and he was eager to share his expertise, particularly of Italy and all things Italian. At the annual AWP conference, he was always a warm magnet and always well-dressed! In that rodeo of ten thousand writers, he was calm and charming, and he wrangled folks together into being a part of big meals at the best Italian restaurants. Looking back at our emails I see that he was built of old-fashioned stuff: he worked hard at his writing, celebrated the writing of others, enjoyed the company of and communication with his fellow writers and created community around him and throughout the writing world. I will miss him. Below find a photo taken at Prairie Lights in 2015 of John, Flannery O’Connor, and me.