Devon is an author, playwright, critic, and teacher who has come to realize that the stories he tells--fiction and nonfiction--always wind up exploring the hopes and struggles of outsiders and those society has marginalized. It's a story deeply rooted in his own experiences. He grew up in the foothills of North Carolina and worked in one of its many furniture factories, where he learned to appreciate the values of hard-working people, and as a projectionist at the town's two movie theaters, where he learned to tell a good story. When he's not writing, he has spent his career trying to teach students those same values.

 

As a teenager, he covered high school basketball for his hometown daily and wrote a humor column for his high school newspaper, which got him kicked out of school on the last day of his senior year. He studied philosophy at Lenoir Rhyne College (where he met his wife Kay), earned an M.A. in creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of South Carolina. Early in his career, he studied for the ministry, served as pastor of an inner city inter-racial church, and mentored first-generation students of color at a community college. He has lived and worked in Fort Worth, Louisville, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Columbia, and Atlanta, and lives now outside Nashville.