Lou Zitnik

Born in Panama, somewhere in the province of Colon, I took one look at the world and knew I had to write about it. But my fingers didn't work so good, and my grammar stunk. So I grew up in California and Washington, on army bases and in beach towns, learning how to swim and surf while reading Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Hemingway.

Ejected into the adult world, I worked as a beach lifeguard and swim coach, and bought a used war-surplus typewriter. Except for weighing more than a boat anchor, the typewriter came in handy when California made an effort to educate its citizens, even those who couldn't afford it, even those who were crazy enough to want a degree in English.

After a cum-laude degree of fun at San Francisco State College, to keep tapping out pages of blurry plot lines, I taught English in Afghanistan, coached a swim team in the Dominican Republic, led scuba tours in Hawaii, and pretended to be a sports writer on the island of Maui. Missed deadlines and repeated attempts to incorporate fiction into scores from high school football games led to the Iowa Writers Workshop. Two years later, my sports writer friends said I deserved a lot of credit.

By then I knew how to use a computer. But my fingers still couldn't find the right keys, so my only hope was to earn another degree, find a teaching job, and marry a richly beautiful wife. Like my birth in Panama, all those hopes came to life. Now I just have to find the right words.