Kirk Landers

Biography: Kirk Landers

Kirk Landers launched his professional writing career in the U.S. Army, writing profiles of his fellow Basic Trainees for the post newspaper in return for getting out of KP and guard duty. After military service, he worked for a suburban shopper, then became a staff writer and editor for an RV magazine. Over the next decade, he was the chief editor for two special interest magazines and a staff writer for Time-Life Books.

In the mid-Eighties, he entered the trade magazine world as a chief editor, first with a title in the food industry, then in the construction industry. His magazines won dozens of awards for journalistic excellence over the next 20 years.

In 2001, Landers and three other entrepreneurs purchased two failed trade magazines and spent the next six years building them into valuable properties. Landers and his partners sold their company in 2007. After he completed his obligations to the acquiring company in 2008, Landers became a full time free lance, writing for a variety of construction magazines and learning the craft of writing long fiction.

In the 1990s, he co-authored A Lifetime of Riches, a commissioned biography of self-help writer Napoleon Hill. He self-published his first novel, a mystery, under a pen name in 2012. It won several awards, and he followed with two more in the series. Since 2014, he has focused on writing and placing Alone on the Shield, the story of two Vietnam era lovers who broke up over the war meeting on a wilderness island forty years later.

Landers is married, has three children and seven grandchildren. His military service included an 18-month stint in Vietnam. He has a BA from Drake University. He is an avid wilderness paddler, a poor but enthusiastic fisherman, and a dedicated workout maven. He lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

He first paddled in Quetico Park in the early 1990s and has returned almost every summer since then, usually paddling in tandem with his wife, occasionally alone.