Donald Vowell

Donald Vowell grew up on a lumberyard in Martin, Tennessee. He learned how to play chess from a travelling salesman and then graduated from the University of Tennessee at Martin with a degree in political science. Favorite activity in college: hopping freight trains. He worked as a deckhand on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, being promoted to mate on his last run after the real mate, the cook and the engineer got drunk in Cincinnati and refused to return to the boat. He went to law school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he met THE GIRL and is still married to her to this day. They have two sons, both born in Guatemala. He coached their soccer and chess teams and has been to an estimated one million chess tournaments, not to mention a lot of soccer games. They have a labradoodle named Snoopy and, believe it or not, four cats, whose names will not be listed for lack of space. He enjoys playing fetch with Snoopy and spending time in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He maintains six birdhouses and has converted the family’s swimming pool into a very successful frog pond. When he is not writing fiction, or playing pickleball, he is an appellate lawyer in Knoxville.