Ben Campbell

His novels DUBROVNIK, VITRUVIAN MAN, and REGENERATION were hammered out in the shadows of communist Croatia in 1991, when the air was thick with suspicion. DUBROVNIK is the one that bites hardest—his international thriller, and every book he’s put into the world carries the same signature: photographs he shot while drifting through Europe and the United States of America, images that glint with stories to be told.

Campbell’s mid‑1950s San Francisco memoir 402 AVALON captures a city in social upheaval and a childhood shaped by cultural tension. Its follow‑up, EXCELSIOR DISTRICT, returns to the 88‑year‑old Avalon Avenue home and the ghosts that lingered there. His other works include TRAVELS WITH TOM, an exhilarating journey across Europe and the United States, and KISSING FREUD, a dramatic‑comic tale of redemption and revenge.

Ben came up rough‑cut by San Francisco classrooms, walked out with a Poli‑Sci degree and a taste for the wider world. He’s drifted through the Western hemisphere, turning miles into manuscripts—novels, stories, dispatches from the road. Now he’s running a quieter, darker job: writing under a pseudonym, shaping MY MOTHER’S PIANO, a tale built from childhood bruises, adoption papers, panic in the bloodstream, and the slow mercy of human connection.

Campbell holes up in Old Monterey, in a hillside place overlooking the silver spread of the bay, living with his beautiful wife and the ghosts he hasn’t finished writing out.