Banned Book

"Banned Book" is a genre blending collection of literary fiction and art. Both creative and ambitious, this book is the product of 21 years of work – containing short stories, poetry, photographs, and paintings. The greater part was written soon after the turn of the millennium. Timely stories, some poetry, and acrylic paintings to introduce each chapter were produced between 2019 and 2021. Although the writing process has spanned decades, "Banned Book" seems as crucial and relevant today as it did when the project began in 2001 – provoking the reader to ask questions that have no answers. This unique book attempts to define the difference between objective and subjective truth, reinforcing the idea that knowing the truth is, in fact, not knowing the truth.

There is an utter lack of complacency that "Banned Book" evokes in the reader. The book makes you want to scream out the windows of a moving car, eat with your hands, throw the smart phone off the top of a steep, rocky cliff, and watch it plummet and shatter into a million pieces at the bottom. The book is intended to make the reader think, and even more, become involved in their own lives, not be merely a detached spectator of their own life, or worse, vicarious spectator in other people's lives, but a major player in their own, and get involved in thinking about injecting meaning into an existence that seems to have none.

If something seems off-limits, taboo, or unspoken in society, likely to offend some or most sensibilities, "Banned Book" will linger on it, make you look and stare at it, until the obscenity becomes the norm, and the normal becomes the obscene.

'Stalking Chore' was published in Adelaide Literary Magazine in 2019.

'Reduction in the Intensity of Light' was featured in the Dab Art exhibition ART IN THE TIME OF CORONA, VOL. 2, 2021-2022.

Joshua Del Rey was born under a different name at North Shore Hospital in Skokie, Illinois, during the summer of 1979. He was the first child of an inner-city art teacher and a clothing salesman. As far back as he can remember and earlier than that, his family visited 'old friends,' as his mother called them, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Joshua can still place himself at the museum as a small child, staring up at the luminous paintings by these immortal geniuses.

Joshua Del Rey's school experiences were varied and eclectic, as he took to almost all mediums of creative expression. Joshua received a Bachelor of Arts and Letters from Florida Atlantic University and audited an MFA at Chapman University.

Joshua Del Rey is now happily married to Katherine Delos Reyes, and they welcomed Bravery Del Rey, their first son, into the world in April of 2020. He currently lives in Palatine, Illinois.