More About the Author
I was born in Waterloo, Iowa--Ioway as my maternal grandfather pronounced it. My family moved to Tucson, Arizona when I was two.
I don't remember Iowa or the trip to Arizona, but I do remember the Mayflower moving van backing into our driveway on Eli Drive and crushing one of the concrete curbs--a lesson in the transience of the world.
I also remember playing with the sand between the stones in the driveway, looking up, and seeing a monster headed straight at me. I ran to my father, imploring him to get his shotgun. "Well, let's take a look at this monster," he said. When he saw it, he said, "I don't think I need my shotgun. I think I can use the rake." He lifted the thick, brown worm--at least a foot long--off the driveway and tossed it over the back wall into the alley. I was amazed at his courage and ingenuity.
My father was a machinist--a turret lathe operator. When he was laid off from Hughes Aircraft, he traveled to Los Angeles and got a job making parts for the Apollo space program. We sold the house in Tucson and joined him in Canoga Park. I was ten.
I attended Sunnybrae Elementary School. One of the teachers there, Betsy Crawford, encouraged my writing. I had a cheap printing set and my father had taught me to touch type on an old Royal manual typewriter. I used to make faux sports pages for his amusement. He told Betsy Crawford about my hobby, and she suggested that I try writing newspaper accounts of historical events. I did, and Betsy reproduced my handiwork and distributed copies to the class--my first publication.
I attended Sutter Junior High and was awestruck by the massive, delicately colored mural in the library. It was painted by the Danish artist Kay Nielsen, who had traveled to Southern California to work at Disney Studios. Nielsen worked on a version of "The Little Mermaid" that was never released, but he did receive a posthumous credit for the 1992 version.
I served as student body president at Sutter, representing the school when it received an award from the Freedom Foundation in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
During the L.A. teacher's strike of 1970, I collected some articles that the principal had ordered removed from the school newspaper and published them in an underground newspaper. I also wrote a scathing critique of the administration, which did not seem to be living up to the ideals acknowledged by the award the school had received. I was suspended from school for the duration of the strike--an experience that helped inform the five or six books I have written about free speech and censorship.
I was in line to receive several graduation awards, but I got none. I was bewildered. My counselor, Mr. Wright, saw I was crestfallen and pulled me into his office. "You were nominated for every award," he told me, "but you were blackballed because of your newspaper." Mr. Wright looked me in the eye. "I believe you will go on to accomplish more than any of the students who received awards." It was the kindest, most helpful thing anyone ever said to me. I walked out of his office with my head held high.
I wrote my first published poem as an assignment in Jim Malone's creative writing class at Canoga Park High School in 1972. I graduated in 1973.
I attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for a year. I dropped out to be a writer.
I published a few poems over the next few months. In 1975, I self-published a 28-page chapbook of poems. I supported myself as a street poet for a couple of years, including a year I lived in Ajijic, Mexico.
I began writing dramatic poetry. In 1981, the Olympia Arts Ensemble in Minneapolis produced an evening of my plays-in-verse. I published my first nonfiction book in 1989. I have followed it with twenty-six more.
My latest book is Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist. It is the first full biography published in English about the eleventh-century Muslim scholar (known in the West as Alhazen) who developed the scientific method.
