John Hoopes

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At Idaho State, Pocatello, Idaho, 1957-1963, studying English and American literature; there inspired by Ed Dorn, Black Mountain poet in residence, to start Wild Dog magazine, which flourished through twenty-one issues with comrades Gino Sky and Drew Wagnon. Escaped Idaho for San Francisco in 1964, settled in Haight-Ashbury just as that revolution began: two subterranean decades passed in Marin county during that transformative time; while raising two children. Work with John Lilly’s Janus project on dolphin communication led to writing the earliest versions of The Dolphins of Oceanus; also began investigating California/San Francisco history and writing the first book of the San Francisco series of novels; also wrote hundreds of pages of narrative poetry, wrote and staged several plays with local community theater. Graduated at last from the counter-culture to discover Robert Ennis and Tayu in Sebastopol, three essential years studying there. Then remarried and moved to Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, where I lived seven years, learning to build houses Mexican style and communing with the locals of the barrio. Re-patriated in 2001 to Sacramento, private tutoring English, Spanish and Algebra weekdays and writing novels weekends, six novels in six years. Writing slowed severely in 2007 when it became necessary to rescue and raise four grandchildren, who still live with me and my wife Elaine in Sacramento to the present day.