Medlemfredburwell

I've always felt comfortable in a house filled with books. My father at one time had over 10,000 books and whenever he needed a new bookcase he'd hammer one together out of old lumber. My mother and father read to me nightly and I loved how books opened up different worlds I could get lost in. I'd return to favorite settings and characters over and over again. When I was eight or nine years old, Dad sat me down in a big comfy chair in his study, handed me The Human Comedy, by William Saroyan, and said that I could interrupt him with questions whenever I wanted. It became my favorite reading spot.

I am interested in a variety of fiction, from literary and contemporary to historical fiction and my beloved "classics." I love children's literature and particularly what I like to call "books for all ages." I enjoy discovering new writers and exploring their works. For a change, I sometimes read science fiction and fantasy, hearkening back to the Andrew Lang fairytale books I adored when I was a kid. I also appreciate British humor, nonsense and wordplay. In non-fiction, I'm especially interested in biography and history, but I also enjoy devouring books dealing with nature, diaries and journals, baseball and popular music history.

I was born into a family of readers and I gobbled up books from an early age. My father Basil Burwell loved wordplay and storytelling and published novels and poetry. I grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and remember trailing after my parents through the nooks and crannies of second hand bookstores and the crowded booths of flea markets in search of paper treasure. I became interested in writing when I was ten years old, started keeping a diary that I still write, and began creating my own tales. After college in Vermont and Wisconsin, I followed my interest in editing and served as Associate Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Beloit Fiction Journal and as publisher and editor of Acorn Whistle magazine. I've published short fiction and non-fiction on a variety of topics, including baseball, rock 'n' roll and American history. I live with my wife and son in Beloit, Wisconsin. I like the idea of "books for all ages" and I hope my "coming of age" novel, Prairie Hill, will appeal to a variety of readers.