Michael Marrone

Michael Marrone was born less than three miles from a natural wonder of the world, and took for granted weekend hikes with his family from the rim of Niagara Falls down the gorge to such fearsome landmarks as the Whirlpool and Devil's Hole. After a good number of meanderings--roofing in California; school at the University of Notre Dame (where he studied the Classics, boxed welterweight, and dug graves at the school's cemetery for "work-study"); and Peace Corps service in Liberia, West Africa, to name a few--he has lived the past 18 years within 30 miles of the Falls and no longer takes it--or anything else--for granted.

In addition to his Classics degree, Marrone earned a Masters from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. After several years working directly in that field, he migrated to corporate communications and from there stumbled into fundraising, where he built a successful career negotiating six- and seven-figure gifts for such life-changing initiatives as scholarships and cancer research. Through this work, he has met many memorable characters eager to share stories from their long and interesting lives. Bits and pieces of these stories appear in many of Marrone's short stories, and are echoed in spirit if not in detail in Gooder than Gold.

Returning to his journalism roots, Marrone is currently at work on a creative non-fiction account of the unlikely gold medal victory by a team of old school Jewish American hockey players in the 2013 Maccabi Games.