Philip Gerard

"I believe in the writer as a witness to evil, as a reporter of injustice, as a chronicler of human compassion, even on occasion of greatness, as one whose skills illuminate the Truth with a capital T, without irony. I believe it is the job of the writer to put into words what is worst - and also what is best - about us. To light up our possibilities, discover the finest lives to which we can aspire, and to inspire our readers to greatness of soul and heart." The Patron Saint of Dreams book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsvexuZ8Q7 ________________________________________ Pocket Biography Philip Gerard was born in 1955 and grew up in Newark, Delaware. He attended St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware. At the University of Delaware, he earned a B.A. in English and Anthropology, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. After college he lived in Burlington, Vermont, writing freelance articles, before returning to newspaper work in Delaware and then going west to study fiction writing at the University of Arizona writers workshop. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1981 and almost immediately joined the faculty at Arizona State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and later as Writer in Residence. He remained at ASU until 1986, then taught for a brief time at Lake Forest College in Illinois before migrating to coastal North Carolina. Gerard has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous magazines, including New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly, Creative Nonfiction, Hawai'i Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Letters, Arts & Letters, Fourth Genre, and The World & I. He is the author of three novels: Hatteras Light (Scribners 1986; Blair/ Salem paper 1997, nominated for the Ernest Hemingway Prize), Cape Fear Rising (Blair 1994), Desert Kill (William Morrow 1994; Piatkus in U.K. 1994); and four books of nonfiction, including Brilliant Passage. . . a schooning memoir (Mystic 1989) and Creative Nonfiction-- Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life (Story Press 1996), which was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month and Quality Paperback Book Clubs. Maryanne Culpepper, director of story development for National Geographic Television, writes, "It is the manual for nonfiction storytellers. . . Creative Nonfiction is on every bookcase at National Geographic Television." He has written nine half-hour shows for Globe Watch, an international affairs program, for PBS-affiliate WUNC-TV, Chapel Hill, N.C. , and international broadcast, and scripted two hour-long environmental documentaries, one of which, "RiverRun- down the Cape Fear to the Sea," won a Silver Reel of Merit from the International Television Association in 1994. Two of his weekly radio essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Gerard's Writing a Book that Makes a Difference (Story Press, 2000), combines his dual passions of writing and teaching. His latest book of nonfiction Secret Soldiers (Dutton 2002; Plume softcover 2004) tells the story of an unlikely band of heroes in World War II: artists who fought the Nazis by creating elaborate scenarios of deception, conjuring phantom armored divisions out of sound effects, radio scripts, pyrotechnics, and inflatable tanks. River Run: Adventuring Through History,Nature, and Politics Down the Cape Fear to the Sea is forthcoming from UNC Press. He teaches in the BFA and MFA Programs of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, which he chairs. He has won the Faculty Scholarship Award, the College of Arts & Science Teaching Award, the Chancellor's Medal for Excellence in Teaching, the Graduate Mentor Award, the Board of Trustees Teaching Award, and a Distinguished Teaching Professorship, and the Faculty Excellence Award given by the MFA students. The Philip Gerard Fellowship, endowed by benefactor Charles F. Green III to honor Gerard's work in establishing and directing the MFA program, is awarded annually to an MFA student on the basis of literary merit. Gerard has also been writer in residence at Bradford (MA) College and Old Dominion University (VA), has taught at the Sand Hills and Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, and has conducted workshops at the Chautauqua Institution , the Wildacres Summer Writers Retreat, and the Goucher College summer residency MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. In keeping with his conviction that writers should give something back to their profession, he has served on the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network and from 1995-98 on the Board of Directors of the Associated Writing Programs, for two of those years as President. He has been appointed by Governor Bev Perdue to a second three-year term on the North Carolina Arts Council. Look for his new book of narrative essays, The Patron Saint of Dreams, from Hub City Press in Spring 2012.