Joseph Kovler’s sixth historical fiction novella, Skulls and Gulls, is a 1938 tale of eugenics, forgotten people, and reckoning.

Based in East Hampton, New York, Joe writes historical fiction novellas with a cinematic edge, drawing inspiration from Long Island’s forgotten histories and the darker crossroads of the American experience. He is also the author of acclaimed, unproduced screenplays.

His debut novella, At the Corner of Hitler and Goering, about three Jewish boxers confronting Nazism at a German-American summer camp in Yaphank, New York, earned a Five-Star Bronze Award in the 2022 Historical Fiction Company Book of the Year contest and was long-listed for the 2025 CIBA SEA Shorts Awards.

His second novella, Dangerous Crossings, follows two young Cuban refugees sent to Camp Hero in Montauk during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It won Silver in the 2024 Global Ebook Awards for Historical Literature Fiction – Contemporary.

In Hendersonville Olympics, Kovler turns to the Jim Crow South of 1965, where a boy confronts the hard truths of prejudice and belonging. Three Mile Harbor bends time and myth in a haunting tale linking Captain Kidd’s wife in the 1700s with her descendant more than three centuries later. In The Fight for Miami, real-life titans Al Capone and Carl Fisher collide in a gripping story of ambition, power, and the making of Miami Beach.

When he isn’t writing, Joe can often be found battling the fairways or in his woodshop, making gifts for family and friends.