Lies You Wanted to Hear (Thomson)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1946
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., University
   of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Natick, Massachusetts

Even as a young high school football player who caught the eye of college coaches, James W. Thomson realized that football wasn't truly in his future. Instead, a scholarship enabled him to pursue academics at Harvard, where he discovered his love of literature and art history.

After a two-year tour of duty in Vietnam as a Naval ship navigator, Thomson returned to school and completed his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a discouraging stint in academia, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and joined a start-up company. He stayed with the firm for 13 years as it grew to 300 employees with offices from Los Angeles to London.

Eventually, to fulfill a life-time dream of becoming a writer, Thomson joined a workshop led by Andre Dubus, Jr., who taught him to devote time every day to writing. Three novels, a memoir and a dozen short stories later, Thomson can now call himself a writer. His work has earned him a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a number of his stories have appeared in literary quarterlies, with one winning a national short story contest.

Thomson lives with his wife Elizabeth in a Victorian fam house west of Boston. They have five adult children. (Adapted from the author's website.)