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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