William Gaumer

William Gaumer writes fiction and history from the inside out, about worlds he lived in or dug into until he knew them cold. He grew up on the East Side of Columbus, Ohio, the son of a barber, and became a barber himself. He is a lifelong devotee of classic radio, which is where The Last DJ comes from. He now writes from a farm in Lewisburg, Tennessee.

His books run from the early-2000s bootleg DVD underground in Pirate to the last days of free-form FM radio in The Last DJ, the bourbon history behind a single name in They Called Him Pappy, his own family's Steubenville in The Running Mates of Steubenville, the founding of a faith in Russellites, and Kansas crime in Blood & Grain. His latest traces how American songwriters from Stephen Foster to Woody Guthrie got paid in everything but money.

He writes for readers of Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy, and Denis Johnson. Plain people, hard luck, and the places the map forgets.