A native New Yorker, Joseph Roccasalvo grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He followed his graduate degrees in Philosophy, English Literature, and Theology with a Harvard Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkok and Chicago. For over ten years in New York City, he was a professor of religious studies at Fordham University´s Bronx and Lincoln Center Campuses. He was also visiting professor of Buddhism at Columbia University in New York City and Franklin University in Lugano, Switzerland. Now engaged in graduate school mentoring, he is also a fiction writer. He has published five novels, two novellas, three books of short stories, a play, and a memoir.