G. Kent Colbath

I'm a science nerd. Always have been. That six-year-old who struggles to tie his shoes, but can rattle off the names of dozens of dinosaurs? Yeah, that was me. Always loved history too, and literature once I hit fifth grade and the powers that be quit sticking me in the slow reading group. In college I decided Geology was a much more practical major than either History or English Lit. Good call. My scientific adventures have led me all over the world, including stints in industry, post-doctoral research appointments at the Smithsonian and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, a teaching career at Cerritos Community College in Southern California, and eventually to glorious Flagstaff, Arizona. At one point I presented an invited paper at a symposium at Oxford just down the hall from where Huxley debated Bishop Wilberforce. A summer fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1975 particularly fired my imagination. Through it all I kept writing. Research papers, field guides, popular articles, with unpublished scraps of poetry and the odd short story. It's all story telling, granted the rules are a bit different for research than fiction. Now that I'm partially retired, I'm back at it with even more determination. Nereis, Nereis, my first novel, written in collaboration with my friend Frank Gaik (an English professor) is just the start.