John DeFilippis
AUTHOR

John DeFilippis

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Dr. John DeFilippis was born on March 9, 1970 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He grew up in the Greenville section of Jersey City, graduating from Our Lady of Mercy Grammar School in 1984. In 1988, he graduated from Saint Peter’s Preparatory High School and went on to study at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. After earning his Bachelor of Science degree, Dr. DeFilippis attended the School of Theology at Seton Hall University for three years. During this time, he earned his master’s degree in theology and discerned a call to the Catholic priesthood. After ultimately deciding that he did not have a religious vocation, Dr. DeFilippis transitioned into the field of education.

He taught for five years at both the elementary and secondary levels, and earned a second master’s degree in educational administration. In 2000, Dr. DeFilippis made yet another transition, this time accepting an offer to become an academic administrator at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City. He would spend the next seven years there, and in 2007 he completed his PhD in educational leadership at Seton Hall University. After finishing his doctoral degree, he accepted an offer to become a director in the Division of Academic Affairs at New Jersey City University.

But through all the years of earning graduate degrees, teaching, and working in educational administration, Dr. DeFilippis never lost sight of his childhood dream. That dream was to become a published author. He loved writing, and he also loved fantasy stories as a child, especially those that contained courageous warriors, dangerous quests, and fierce monsters. Inspired by epic stories such as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Jason and the Argonauts, Dr. DeFilippis began to use his free time to formulate ideas for his own series of fantasy novels. Over the course of several years, he developed detailed outlines and finally reached the point where he was ready to start writing. But balancing a full-time administrative position with part-time teaching and doctoral studies made it all but impossible to find the time.

That all changed in July of 2010, when Dr. DeFilippis lost his job during the economic recession. Determined to turn a negative into a positive, he used his abundance of free time during his unemployment to focus on his novel. By April of 2011, the first draft of the book was complete. David Niall Wilson of Crossroad Press decided to take a chance on The Quest of the Thirteen, and in 2012 the dream was finally fulfilled.

Over the next three years, Dr. DeFilippis wrote three more volumes in what would come to be known as The Medallion of Mavinor series. They are The Birth of Malgyron (2013), The Crusade Against Darkness (2014), and The Last of the Thirteen (2015). Volume I, The Quest of the Thirteen, became a best seller in May of 2016, reaching the top five in Amazon’s Christian Fantasy category. Volume II, The Birth of Malgyron, followed suit by reaching the top three in Christian Fantasy shortly thereafter.

Today, Dr. DeFilippis serves as a lecturer in the College of Education at Kean University. His most recent book, Cooking With Amy, is a memorial cookbook written in honor of his late mother, who died tragically in 2024 after a sudden, unexpected cancer diagnosis. The book contains over 50 of her greatest recipes, along with anecdotes from Dr. DeFilippis' life with her and his experiences growing up in an Italian-American family during the 1970s and 1980s.

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