Charles Robert Baker

I retired in December 2016 from Southern Methodist University where I had worked as a cataloger in The Bridwell Library for nearly thirty years; during my time there, I wrote Christmas-themed short stories for the holiday supplements of a Dallas newspaper and those caught the attention of an editor at Scribner's. The editor, Jay Parini, asked if I would be interested in contributing literary biographies to Scribner's reference collections: "American Writers," "British Writers," "American Writers Classics," and "British Writers Classics." Over the years, approximately thirty of my essays were published. Subsequently, I was approached by Oxford University Press and asked to write nine essays on the life and work of authors ranging from James Fenimore Cooper to Truman Capote to J. K. Rowling. Those chapters were accepted and published in The "Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature." I gathered my Christmas stories into a book titled "Christmas Then: Ten Stories," which was published in October 2019. Many readers asked for more stories featuring the Matkin family so I hope you will enjoy my novel THOMAS GODWIN published October, 2024 on my 76th birthday.