Paul Fericano is a poet, satirist and social activist. He was born in San Francisco in 1951, the year the term "rock and roll" was first used on the radio. He is the editor and co-founder of Yossarian Universal (1980), the nation's first parody news service. Since 1971, his poetry and prose have appeared, disappeared and reappeared in various underground and above-ground literary and media outlets in this country and abroad, including: The Antarctic Review, Inside Joke, Mother Jones, Poetry Now, Projector, The Realist, Saturday Night Live, SoHo Arts Weekly, Vagabond, The Wormwood Review, and Catavencu Incomod (Romania), Charlie Hebdo (Paris), Il Male (Italy), Krokodil (Moscow), Pardon (Germany), Punch (London) and Satyrcón (Argentina).
His chapbooks and books of poetry and fiction include: Cancer Quiz (Scarecrow Books, 1977); Commercial Break (Poor Souls Press, 1982); The One Minute President (with Elio Ligi / Stroessner Verlag, 1986); and Interview with the Scalia (Peabody Press, 1994). Loading the Revolver with Real Bullets (Second Coming Press, 1977), a collection of his work partly funded by the state of California, achieved notoriety in 1978, when one of its poems, "The Three Stooges at a Hollywood Party," was read on the floor of the California State Senate as a reason to abolish the California Arts Council.
In 1982, he received the Howitzer Prize for his poem, "Sinatra, Sinatra," an award he himself created and exposed as a literary hoax to reveal the absurd nature of competitive awards. The following year, Commercial Break received both the Prix de Voltaire (Paris) and the Ambrose Bierce Prize (San Francisco) for upholding the traditions of socio-political satire.
He currently serves as director of Instruments of Peace/ SafeNet (2003), a nonprofit reconciliation group for survivors of clergy sexual abuse and writes an online column on the healing process (A Room With A Pew). He is a resident of the San Francisco peninsula.
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