About the Author
Clif Collins grew up in Byron, Georgia, and attended Clemson University, where he taught full-time from 1988-1990. After part-time teaching stints at the Maryland House of Corrections and the Maryland Correctional Institute, he was hired as a member of the English faculty at Montgomery College (Rockville, MD) in 1993. According to Collins, his writing was heavily influenced by the stories he heard as a child from his paternal grandmother and his uncles, as well as works he later read by James Baldwin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, E.L. Doctorow, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Equally important to his own work, however, is the tradition of the American singer-songwriter, including Woody Guthrie, Blind Willie McTell, Bob Dylan, John Hiatt, Lucinda Williams, the Handsome Family, and others. Clif Collins currently resides in Maryland with his wife and son. Lives of the Apostles is his first published book.