Rafael Stumbo Tarasco

Writer at large

Born in New York to Italian parents, Stumbo received his BFA in Mass Communications from Emerson College in Boston. He was one of the first writers to attend the Emerson MFA Fiction Writing Program directed by James Randall, founder of Ploughshares and Pym-Randall Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  While in Boston, Stumbo edited and contributed short fiction to The Emerson Review. He has been a contributing writer to the Sanborn’s Insurance Travel Logs documenting the road trip from the Texas border with Mexico across Central America to Costa Rica. Belize First Magazine also published his travel reports. Short stories and human interest pieces frequently appear in the online magazine QCostaRica.com.    He has attended writer’s workshops and conferences on the nature of the New Novel with French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, both in Paris and at Harvard University. Life-long friend, journalist and Glenway Wescott biographer Jerry Rosco continues to provide editorial commentary on Stumbo’s work and misadventures.  Perpetual traveler and serial entrepreneur, he has owned and operated a number of businesses in Costa Rica where he resides and holds citizenship.  Italian by heritage, Neoyorquino by birth and Costa Rican by choice, he is also a veteran of the USN, where he was ironically stationed in Gaeta, Italy.