JTA Planner: JTA 4-6 week planner

by Justin Allen

4-6 week planner

87 pages, Paperback

Published May 10, 2019

About the author

Justin was born in Boise, Idaho in 1974. He grad­u­ated from Boise State Uni­ver­sity with a degree in phi­los­o­phy, was named one of the school’s Top Ten Schol­ars, and invited to present the vale­dic­tory address at the com­mence­ment of the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences. Soon after, Justin moved to New York City, where he enrolled in Colum­bia University’s Writ­ing Pro­gram, spe­cial­iz­ing in fic­tion and sin­cerely hop­ing to become the next Jack Ker­ouac. While at Colum­bia he wrote what he has later come to call his ‘Bar­bar­ian Story,’ and turned it in for judg­ing by his work­shop class. He expected to weather a fear­some bar­rage of scorn, and was hap­pily sur­prised at how well they took it.

While work­ing on that story, Justin was first intro­duced to Uruk, a pre­his­toric hunter from the jun­gles of sub-Saharan Africa, and the hero of his first novel, Slaves of the Shi­nar. It took him fully six more years, umpteen rough drafts, buck­ets of tears and tor­rents of blood, to fin­ish the novel and get it placed with The Over­look Press. Dur­ing that time he also met and mar­ried his true-love, Day Mitchell, trav­eled with her to Tahiti, New Zealand, Kenya, Belize, Nicaragua, and a myr­iad of other, equally won­der­ful locales, and began work on two new nov­els, The Amer­i­can and Tomor­row­land, and a book of travel essays about the Amer­i­can National Parks.

Along with his writ­ing, Justin also has a pas­sion for clas­si­cal bal­let, tak­ing class as often as six times a week, and per­form­ing occa­sion­ally with such com­pa­nies as Dances Patrelle (for whom he has also worked as admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor), and Eidolon Bal­let in Con­cert. He first began danc­ing while a stu­dent at Boise State Uni­ver­sity, and first per­formed with Idaho Dance Theatre.

Justin is roughly six feet tall, weighs some­where around 185 pounds (often more, to his cha­grin), has dark-brown hair and eyes, and suf­fers from near-sightedness, motion-sickness, and a ten­dency to get angry at air­port per­son­nel. His wife, a licensed social worker, is try­ing to help him over­come this last item, but finds the going hard.

In 2001, Justin and Day adopted a house­plant and affec­tion­ately named her Phil. Wor­ry­ing that Phil was grow­ing up alone, last year they adopted again, and are proud to be the some­what neg­li­gent par­ents of a sec­ond plant, Phil Jr. They live in New York City.