Charles Fager

Chuck Fager is a writer, editor, and peace activist. He has published in a variety of genres: journalism, historical research, fiction, and poetry. His special interests have been in the 1960s civil rights movement; religion, especially Quakerism (The Society of Friends); and movements to end wars, and war. His work has been recognized for a a clear, absorbing narrative style.

Born in Kansas to a Catholic family, Chuck was raised on military bases. In high school, Fager left Catholicism, and for some years regarded himself as an atheist. However, he remained interested in religion.

Fager enrolled at Colorado State University in 1960. There he was in the Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Colorado State University, where he won a medal as the Outstanding Freshman Cadet, and later commanded a prize-winning AFROTC drill team. However, by his senior year his interest in the Air Force had waned, and he left the ROTC. After leaving Colorado in late 1964, he was drawn to the civil rights movement, and by December had become a very junior member of Dr. Martin Luther King's staff.

Chuck spent a year living and doing civil rights work in Selma, Alabama, during and after the historic voting rights campaign there. This time became the subject of two of his books, Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South; and a memoir, Eating Dr. King's Dinner.

While in Alabama he encountered and later joined the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. He performed alternative service as a conscientious objector to the military draft, completed a B.A. in Humanities from Colorado State University in 1967 and then attended Harvard Divinity School, mostly part-time, for four years, starting in 1968.

In 1970, he resolved to pursue writing as a full-time vocation, a commitment which he has never given up, publishing many books and articles, while taking many different "day jobs" to support these projects.

In late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, he became Director of Quaker House, a long-term peace project near Fort Bragg in North Carolina that was very busy through the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. He retired from Quaker House in 2012, and has since pursued various writing projects.

Chuck has been married and divorced twice, has four grown children, and an increasing number of grandchildren. He lives and writes in Durham, North Carolina.

His blog, "A Friendly Letter," is at: www.afriendlyletter.com