David L. Dudley

"Let's read a story! Dad, how about 'Cars, Trucks, and Things that Go'?" "Dad, tell us a Yertle the Turtle story!" Requests like that, from all four of my children, always warmed my heart. I knew I was passing on to them the enormous pleasures of reading, telling, and discussing stories. Perhaps that's one reason being a Professor of Literature was the perfect profession for me. How fun to be paid to do what you love and to share that love with a whole generation of students.

I published my first novel, "The Bicycle Man," a good many years ago. Like my next two novels, "Caleb's Wars" and "Cy in Chains," "The Bicycle Man" features African American characters facing and overcoming the obstacles of life in the American South before the coming of the Civil Rights era. Recently, I've changed my focus from fiction about African Americans to stories rooted in the Hebrew Bible. In the Biblical texts I've found a whole new trove of characters, action, conflicts, and challenges not unlike those we face today, 3000 years later. King David, King Solomon, the prophet Ezekiel, a young Hebrew man exiled in Babylon--these are characters asking deeply spiritual and moral questions. Flawed characters who sometimes fail in their efforts to follow their God. Characters like us.

Read my stories. Learn about times and places different from our own, but strikingly like our own. Be inspired by your reading to ask and answer the important questions that face you in your life. Read all the time. Tell stories to your friends, your children, your grandchildren. Write your own novel. Create new stories about timeless themes. Be happy. Be blessed. Be kind.