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I was born in 1959 in St. Louis, Missouri. Having no clue what I was doing there, I attended and ignominiously dropped out of Florissant Valley Community College and the University of Missouri-Columbia. Still sans clue, I enlisted in the United States Air Force in March 1980 and was a Korean linguist, serving two years at Osan Air Base in South Korea. The military turned my life around.

In 1984 I received a B.A. in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1985 I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and became an Intelligence Officer. Having committed some grave offense in a previous incarnation, I was required to serve three years of hard time at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, when my assignment "Dream Sheet" said 'any overseas is better than anyplace stateside'. Too ambiguous, obviously. I earned a M.A. in International Relations at St. Mary's University there in 1988. In 1989 I was promoted to Captain and took the reverse Midnight Express to Turkey. After an amazing hitch as Chief of Intelligence at Ankara Air Station as the Persian Gulf war began, I served another year on lockdown at the Pentagon before being discharged in 1992.

While waiting to join the class of 1995 at Harvard Law School, I worked on President Clinton's first election campaign and learned that I had no stomach for elective politics. At Harvard it became clear that I had no stomach for the law. I decided to study less (a whole lot less) and have some fun. I began writing a column for the school's newspaper (The Record) and realized what I had the stomach for. I'm a writer.

In January 1996 I wrote an essay - Who Shot Johnny? - for the New Republic which won Best American Essays and jump started my writing career. Since then, I've free lanced for the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Vibe, Mother Jones, Slate, the Village Voice, and many other publications. Lots of TV and radio, a few anthologies. I was the National Correspondent for Salon, a Beliefnet columnist, and a Senior Editor at US News & World Report.

 

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