Michael Fields

In April 1967, while serving as a Peace Corps teacher in Northeast Thailand, Michael Fields had a life-changing moment. Michael was visiting an impoverished hamlet where Seabees were showing the villagers how to build a well. Work was suddenly stopped when two helicopters circled and landed in the village square. As the passengers disembarked, Michael immediately recognized John Steinbeck. The 1962 Nobel Prize recipient was covering the Vietnam War for the Philadelphia Inquirer. John Steinbeck reported about the Seabees and Peace Corps in his next article: "It's what every man of energy wants - to be needed and to fill the need by his work and his mind and his imagination, and in the end to have something that wasn't there before." The villagers had a well "that wasn't there before." After talking with and listening to John Steinbeck for hours, Michael wrote six novels that weren't there before.

Michael has a BS/Ed from Edinboro University (PA) and an MA/English from the University of Dayton. Michael received a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Grant to work in Laos in 1968 and he was honored as a Christa McAuliffe Fellow (University of Stanford) in 1989. Now retired, Michael's chief interest is writing.

Michael's fictional Twin River series has garnered rare reviews. Twin River III reviewed by Kirkus Reviews - "fans of raw 1970s narratives (Deliverance and Straw Dogs) will find much to cheer." And Kirkus Reviews on Twin River IV -"the latest visit to Twin River becomes an exhilarating exercise in sustained, multipronged tension."