About the Author

I was born shortly before the end of World War II in Madison, Wisconsin, the first of three children. When I was four we moved to Florida where my father, a salesman, struggled to make a living- we moved often. I adapted to these challenging times by cultivating a sense of adventure. These adventures are woven throughout my writings and included in my first book, the memoir Hitchhiking from Vietnam: Seeking the Ox.

When I was in the fifth grade we bought a house in North Miami, Florida where I graduated from high school in 1963. I took my first hitchhiking trip that summer from Illinois back to Florida and got hooked on the freedom of the open road.

In the fall I attended junior college in Miami, studied journalism and worked on the college paper. The following summer I worked at the New York World’s Fair then hitched to California and back just for fun. As a young man I struggled through life’s conflicts making more than my share of mistakes. My way of processing these conflicts was to write. Writing not only brought me satisfaction, but also recognition.

After completing junior college I went to the University of Missouri, but left school before finishing a journalism degree and enlisted in the Navy in 1966 to avoid the draft. I joined with a sense of pride, but after two deployments to Vietnam and a tour of duty on a submarine tender I left with a sense of disillusionment.

In 1972 I graduated from Columbia College in Chicago determined to become a journalist. I took a job with a newspaper in La Porte, Indiana, but soon became bored with small town reporting. I tried some freelancing but ended up back in Madison searching for a new life.

Ditching journalism, I got a job at a hospital and became a nurse. I moved to Blackfoot, Idaho in 1978 where I worked at an institution for the criminally insane. That experience was interesting but stressful and after a couple of years I decided to try something new. I attended graduate school for counseling, but left in despair over the futility of the profession.

I was looking for a new career when mother hood-winked me into moving to Columbia, South Carolina where we tried to make money buying and selling homes. In 1981 the economy was in a recession and we failed miserably. I felt trapped living with my mother at the age of 36, so I left town and escaped back to Madison.

I was free and on my own again, but with no idea of what to do. I began driving for Union Cab, a company that had risen from the ashes of a labor dispute-a thinking person’s worker owned cooperative, a liberal enclave for artists and politicos. Who could ask for a more flexible job, a more fertile ground for ideas, and time to write and pursue my interests?

Over the years I have written about environmental and forestry issues for Madison’s Isthmus and in the journal Wild Earth. I was also editor of the Union Cab newsletter for four years. My poetry was been featured as part of an art exhibit at the Elvejem Museum in Madison and my short stories have been published in Mobius, The Journal of Social Change.

For me the real joy of writing is in telling a good story, sharing my experiences with others, and imparting a few of life’s lessons along the way.

Today I live in Monona, a small town completely surrounded by Madison, driving, writing and living with my wife of 12 years.

— Richard Chamberlin