Born in Havana Cuba, Jay Chirino immigrated to the United States with his family when he was just eleven years old. Having to start a new life in a new country, along with the challenges of having to go to school without knowing the language and the culture of this new place, brought him a great deal of alienation and loneliness. He dealt with it the same way he had dealt with the previous bouts of depression he had experienced as a child; he wrote. Poetry, short stories, scrambled feelings, whatever was necessary to get the sting of his solitude out.
Years later, after a long battle with addiction, Jay found himself writing again, this time realizing that this was not only an escape, but a necessity in his everyday life. He wrote his first book based on his experiences while detoxing in a psychiatric hospital and the people he met there. The rest is now history.
Jay continues to focus his writing mostly on mental health and addiction awareness, but he doesn’t shy away from seeking new, undiscovered stories everywhere he looks.
He lives in Florida with his wife and his pets.