Goodbye Days (Zentner) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—J.D., Vanderbilt University
• Awards—William C. Morris from the American Library Assn.
• Currently—lives in Nashville, Tennessee

Before Jeff Zentner became an author, he was a guitarist-singer-songwriter. Before that he was a lawyer, in fact, an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Tennessee. He earned his JD degree from Vanderbilt in 2006 and tried cases for the state for a number of years. He also put in time as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.

Although he didn't pick up the guitar until he was 21, it was music and songwriting that became his passions. In the early 2000s he joined a band called Creech Holler, and although it received good reviews, the group eventually broke up. At that point, Zentner cut his own solo albums, releasing five CDs on his own. He also appeared on recordings with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, and Lydia Lunch, among others.

Then, while volunteering as a guitar teacher for the Tennessee Teen Rock Camp and the Southern Girls Rock Camp, he was inspired by the young people he worked with to try something different. As he explained it to BookPage:

Working with these amazing teens…showed me how young people cling to the art they love and are willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and be vulnerable for it. The art you love as a young person is so formative. I wanted to create art for that audience.… I would say that volunteering at Rock Camp made me want to write about kids who are creators—musicians, specifically.

Realizing, as he told the Washington Post that he "was never that technically skilled as a musician" to be successful, he decided to try writing novels instead of songs.

His foray into fiction came in 2016 with his novel, The Serpent King, which received rave reviews and won the William C. Morris Award from the American Library Association. The book land on the "Best of 2016" list of seemly every book review media outlet. He followed his debut with a second book, Goodbye Days, in  2017. 

Zentner lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and son. (Adapted from various online sources. Retrieved 5/3/2017.)