Old Movies
I grew up on old monster movies, late-night television, and Buster Keaton films in the basement. Somewhere along the way, movies stopped feeling like entertainment and started feeling like another way of understanding people.
About Brad
Stories have been with me for as long as I can remember. They've taken me places, changed my life, and (occasionally) kept me out of trouble.
Writer. Teacher. Movie lover. Coffee addict. Car guy. Raised on stories.
I grew up in small-town North Carolina, where we played outside until the streetlights came on and Saturday nights were for drive-ins, diners, and imagination.
I've worked regular jobs, raised a family, rebuilt a few cars, taught a lot of students, and read more books than I can count. Through all of it, stories have been the thread that's kept pulling me back to the page.
INFLUENCES & OBSESSIONS01 02
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The Things That Made Me
Cars
My first car was a '72 Camaro, and I probably learned as much from that car as I did in school.
I still love old cars, old diners, old theaters—anything with some miles on it and a story behind it.
Diners & Coffee
A lot of important conversations in my life have happened in diner booths over coffee and pie. Good coffee. Honest conversation. That's a combination you can't really beat.
Growing Up
Sharks and Minnows in the street. Riding bikes until the streetlights came on. Saturday morning cartoons. Rock-and-roll pouring out of AM radios. Summer nights that felt endless. That was my world.
THE LONG WAY AROUND
Becoming a Writer
At UNC Greensboro, I studied with writers like Fred Chappell, Jim Clark, and Lee Zacharias, and discovered authors who stayed with me—Eudora Welty, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor.
Along the way I worked a string of jobs: Wendy's (“management potential”), roofing, a milk bottling plant, and an industrial ice cream freezer so cold employees had to rotate out every fifteen minutes to stand under heat lamps.
After college I worked as a technical editor for a military contractor in Annapolis with a Top Secret clearance (shhhh). At night I wrote short stories and took classes at The Writers' Center in Bethesda.
A few of us started meeting once a month at the Tastee Diner to trade stories over coffee and pie. That little group helped me publish my first short stories.
Later, at the University of Arkansas, I earned an MFA, published my first collection, Circle View, and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship while still a student.
At the time, I was also delivering newspapers and painting houses while raising two toddlers.
Somehow, the writing kept going.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
EXPLORE THE BOOKS ↗
Life Today
These days I divide my time between writing, reading, and enjoying a somewhat less scheduled life with my wife Kristin and our dog, Millie. After many years teaching English and creative writing, I retired from the classroom in 2024. We've traded the mountains for the Gettysburg area, but I haven't traded away the things I love.
I still drink too much coffee. I still love old movies, blues guitar, vinyl records, bookstores, and diners. There was also a time when I jumped off mountains with a hang glider strapped to my back. These days, I prefer to keep my feet on the ground.
And I'm still writing. My latest novel, The Reel Life of Zara Kegg, was published in 2026, and AmericaLand is forthcoming in 2028.
Mostly, I still love stories—reading them, writing them, and talking about them late into the night.
