About the Author

Bob Strother

Award-winning prose writer of character-driven crime fiction, historical fiction, and short stories with grit, wit, darkness, and heart.

Bob Strother was born on July 27, 1944, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he grew into adolescence under the watchful eyes and loving embrace of his maternal and paternal grandparents—patient and protective grandfathers and grandmothers, both women well ahead of their time.

He graduated from Chattanooga Central High School in 1962, got a taste of foundry and manufacturing shift work during summers, and ultimately graduated from the University of Georgia in 1966. Bob enlisted in the United States Marines in 1967 and spent his service time working at the Amphibious Warfare School in Quantico, Virginia.

His professional career included nearly forty years working in quasi-governmental, multi-county planning and development. After eighteen years as its executive director, Bob retired from the South Carolina Appalachian Council of Governments in 2006 to begin his next great adventure.

Those years dealing with government in general—and politicians specifically—honed his natural cynicism, heightened his appreciation for irony, and gave birth to a new career in creative writing.

In the years since, Bob has published over two hundred short stories, poems, and magazine articles. He has received literary awards from nearly two dozen literary organizations, including the 2012 Emrys Foundation/Hub City Writers Fiction Prize, the 2015 Southern Writers Magazine Short Fiction Award Prize, and the 2017 South Carolina Writers Association Carrie McCray Memorial Fiction Prize. He has been nominated for the Small Press Pushcart Prize three times, been published internationally and, in 2014, had his short story “Doughnut Walk” adapted for a short film that premiered at the “Expecting Goodness” Film Festival in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Unlike some adult writers still bearing the scars of growing up in a broken home, Bob cherished his youth, misspent enough of it to make life interesting, and used it as a platform for story ideas. He finds it intriguing how the past follows him around like a failing helium balloon, trailing its string along the floor like some tired old ghost, clinging to the static electricity in his wake. Those memories, though, provide a potent magic—a place where the air is thinner and where the line between the living and the dead can be both breached and embraced.

Bob’s current publications include six novels and one short story collection. He lives with his wife, Vicki, in Greenville, South Carolina.