Charles Finn is the editor of High Desert Journal, a literary and fine arts magazine out of Bend, Oregon. Before joining the journal Charles taught English as a foreign language in Hiroshima, Japan, (for three years), hid out in the woods of British Columbia, Canada, (for ten), spent five years in Montana, much of it living in a 8' x 12' cabin of his own making with no running water or electricity, and wrote. A self-taught woodworker and proponent of “living little” he meanwhile turned a questionable lifestyle and even more questionable life into a somewhat answerable business, A Room of One's Own, building “microhomes,” one-room wood cabins constructed entirely out of reclaimed lumber and materials he salvaged from taking down old barns and buildings. Originally from Vermont he is now hooked on the west, but as fate would have it currently lives with his wife, Joyce Mphande, and their two cats, Pushkin and Lutsa in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His lifelong dream of becoming a writer began when he was seven-years-old and he sold his first piece of writing to his father for 25 cents – which considering the speed with which he wrote it and its brevity is till one of his better paying gigs. He has published in The Sun, Open Spaces, Northern Lights, Wild Earth, High Country News, Writers on the Range, Silk Road and many others. He remembers being duly impressed when he saw the very first issue of High Desert Journal and still can not believe his great good fortune to find himself as its editor.
