Ron Childress

Ron Childress was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut and Florida. Originally planning to teach English literature and write fiction, he changed his career path after a year as a college adjunct. Moving from Florida to Washington, DC, he worked as a writer/editor for a professional association and then as a copywriter/technical writer/programmer for a marketing company that served high-tech clients. Along the way he was publishing short stories in offbeat magazines and counterculture journals. In the 2000s he began to concentrate on long fiction and completed four novel-length manuscripts before winning the 2014 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for his fifth, AND WEST IS WEST, his first published novel.