Ed Prence

Ed Prence grew up in the tiny town of Koppel, Pennsylvania. An amateur baseball player, Ed played for a powerhouse high school team in nearby Ellwood City, and then became a Division I shortstop at Duquesne University of the Atlantic 10 Conference.

He trained for a career in Journalism, but made the leap into advertising sales, where he quickly became one of the leading media account executives in the northeast. In 2010, he retired from Comcast Spotlight in Pittsburgh, having authored over 1000 radio and television commercials. He won the prestigious Telly Award in 2000 for his work in Pittsburgh market advertising.

Now, retired, Ed has turned his talents back to his first love—creative writing. In "The Last of the Rockland Boys," his second novel, an inspiring sports and nostalgia novel, the author draws upon his experiences as a life-long amateur player and his boyhood growing up in a small western-Pennsylvania steel town, where baseball was everything.

Ed's first novel, "The Last Perfect Summer," was winner of the 2014 Independent Book Publishers Association's Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for the Best Historical Fiction of 2013, and also won the Pittsburgh Authors' TAZ Award as the Best General Fiction in the Pittsburgh market.

Ed makes his home on Clearwater Beach, Florida, and also in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.