I was born on November 12, 1969, in NYC, and I grew up in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, and the Wesley Hills suburb in New York's Rockland County.

My education includes a BA from New York University in English/Writing, and an MA from the University of Denver in English/Writing.

Now I'm a full-time freelance writer, editor, and publisher based in the Clear Lake suburb south of Houston, Texas.

As a writer, mostly under my pseudonym J. E. Bright, I've had more than 115 books published for adults and young readers, in formats including storybooks, easy readers, interactive apps, novelty books, coloring & activity books, novelizations, and middle-grade and young adult fiction and non-fiction.

Under my own name, I have two books of poetry published: Render and Catfish and After.

While I love writing original stories, I've also written for many existing characters and licenses, including DC Comics (Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Catwoman, the Joker, Super Friends, Teen Titans, Justice League, etc.), Marvel (The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Avengers), LEGO, Barbie, Clifford, Tonka, DreamWorks (Shrek, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, etc.), Ice Age, Marmaduke, G.I. JOE, Scooby-Doo, Care Bears, Digimon, Bella Sara, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, and Sweet Valley High, among others.

I'm the publisher of Brighten Press, a small company building humor, guidance, fiction, and poetry books for children and adults.

For more than 20 years, I worked in children's publishing houses as an editor at HarperCollins, senior editor at Scholastic, and executive editor at Simon & Schuster, as well as managing editor on the literary magazine Denver Quarterly.