About

Pushcart Prize-nominated author Philip Barbara’s fiction draws on three decades as a journalist at Reuters, where he assisted the global agency’s coverage of mass murders from Columbine to Sandy Hook. Afterward, he researched the ongoing terror of mass shootings in America. His novella The Hartford Atonement is textured with penetrating insights into the terrible truth about gun violence in our country and suggests a way it can be addressed.

In his short story ‘The Church,’ a sandwich maker at a cafeteria near the United Nations thinks he overhears two delegates, one Israeli the other Palestinian, negotiating a Middle East peace. The story appeared in The Delmarva Review, was adapted into a radio play by an NPR affiliate station, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His story ‘Iron Horse’ was a July pick of the month on Fiction on the Web. ‘The Buzzing’ appeared in the Lowestoft Chronicle and in the anthology “The Vicarious Traveler.” His fiction has also appeared in BULL Men’s Fiction, fictionjunkies and The Corvus Review.

Before joining Reuters, he served as a news editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, a magazine covering the U.S. defense industries and its nuclear arsenal, the airline industry, and the Space Shuttle program. Later at Reuters, he appeared on PBS’s Nightly Business Report to discuss the resumption of shuttle launches after the Columbia disaster. He was also interviewed on radio about the dangers of steroidal use by high school athletes.

His four-decade career in journalism began at The Bergen Record, where he shared national honorable mentions for an investigative report into the administrative neglect and abuse of the Palisades Interstate Park overlooking the Hudson River.

Three horrific mass shootings in 2012 inspired him to research random gun violence, the gun industry, and failed gun safety legislation. First was the killing spree at the Aurora, Colorado, movie house in July when a madman dressed in tactical gear broke into the theater during a midnight screening of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and sprayed the crowd. Twelve killed, 70 injured. A month later, a white supremacist killed seven at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Then in December in Newtown, Connecticut, another deeply troubled young man with abundant access to guns killed 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As an editor on the American news desk at Reuters, he assisted the agency’s coverage of these events and their aftermath.

The incidence of mass shootings has only picked up.