BIOGRAPHY

About

David Rothgery, author of Silkie: World One, World Two, is a novelist and short story writer based in Eugene, Oregon, where, for many years, he has also taught college writing and literature at Eastern Oregon State College, the University of Oregon, and Lane Community College. He earned his B.A. from Baldwin-Wallace College, an M.A.T. from Duke University, an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. He was born in Columbus Ohio, but has lived and worked throughout the U.S. –Ohio (Cleveland, Columbus), Virginia (Richmond and Charlottesville), Boston, Buffalo, Durham, Dallas, Seattle, Madison, and Oregon (La Grande, Eugene)–and in Nigeria, Micronesia, and Kenya.

Rothgery has four children (Andrew, Ian, Marc, and Rachel). He lives in Eugene with his wife Hsiao-Ching, a Registered Nurse and Diabetic Educator.

Inspirations

In his writing, Rothgery draws upon his living and teaching (secondary and higher education) in the United States, Nigeria, Kenya, and Micronesia, and on his travels to Africa, Europe, and Central America. The interweaving global news clippings, student and narrator journal vignettes in Silkie: World One, World Two, for example, serve not just as a background tapestry but one into which the Silkie-Stephen tale is woven. Little Mozarts, Little Kings, a forthcoming novel by Rothgery, takes the Civil Rights movement as its backdrop, and is set in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, 1964. In both novels, Rothgery, an epileptic most of his life, transforms the affliction – seizures – into a very special form of disruption: revelation. An altered perception of life.