Born in Chicago in 1949, Richard Holinger grew up near Lincoln Park, spent his secondary school and college years on the East Coast, then returned to the Midwest for graduate school, and then to teach English on the secondary school, community college, and university levels. Since 1979 he’s lived an hour west of Chicago in the Fox River Valley with his wife, his two grown children (occasionally), and one dog after another. He recently retired from a forty-year English instructor position at Marmion Academy, Aurora, but continues to write a column for the Kane County Chronicle (“River Town Chronicles”), and to facilitate Geneva Public Library’s Night Writers Workshop.