William Thompson:  

On August 19th of 1979 I went to New York City marticulated (as we say in the marticulation business) at Fordham University where I graduated four years later with a double maejor in Latin and English. At that time I fancied myself a playwright and convinced others of the same to the point that I won a minor playwrighting award. I also worked at Macy's (in one of their restaurants) and taught high school. After two years living hand to mouth, I decided to go to graduate school. I ended up at the University of Southern Mississippi, the only English Department that would allow me to study Ancient Greek as my "foreign language," and a school that happened to have a good creative writing program. I spent the next eight years (1985 to 1993) in Hattiesburg earning various advanced degrees, reading many good books, coming out of the closet, becoming an activist, making many friends, having the kinds of experiences of which novels are made. After graduate school, I moved to New Orleans to write my dissertation. There I worked in a bookstore in the French Quarter had my version of a nervous break down and returned to Hattiesburg, where I worked in a diner as I finished the dissertation. Ph.D. in hand I returned to Little Rock (1995 / 1996) where I worked at Barnes and Noble as I tried to figure out what to do next. That turned out to be library school, which involved a move back to Louisiana, this time to Baton Rouge, which is just like New Orleans, minus the charm, i.e. violent, poverty stricken, and blase about both of those. I received the MLIS from LSU and was hired by LSU (where I had worked as a graduate student) Libraries, working there for 3.5 years in the Reference and Collection Development Departments, picking up along the way six cats (I already had one) and a dog (also had one of those). I also lived with a possum for a time. In July of 2001, after five years in Baton Rouge, I answered the siren cal...Expand for more