Keith Yocum

Keith Yocum was born in Ridgecrest, California, the civilian town supporting the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. His father, an electrician and former WWII submariner, married an Australian Army nurse he met in a military hospital during the war. After WWII the family lived near China Lake for several years until they moved to the Panama Canal Zone in the mid-1950s. Keith attended school in the Canal Zone and experienced both the easy-going colonial lifestyle of that...See more

Keith Yocum was born in Ridgecrest, California, the civilian town supporting the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. His father, an electrician and former WWII submariner, married an Australian Army nurse he met in a military hospital during the war. After WWII the family lived near China Lake for several years until they moved to the Panama Canal Zone in the mid-1950s. Keith attended school in the Canal Zone and experienced both the easy-going colonial lifestyle of that period, along with the darker side of the Cold War, including being accidentally tear gassed during leftist anti-government riots. In the early 1960s his family moved to Northern Virginia where his father worked as a civilian for the military. In 1967 the family moved to an obscure Naval submarine communications station in Western Australia to be close to his mother's family. Keith attended a Christian Brothers boarding school near Perth, Western Australia and took up several sports including rugby, where he was chosen to represent the state in the junior rugby squad championships in Tasmania. During his two years at the boarding school he wrote a diary, and has never been able to kick the habit of writing. He graduated from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA with a degree in philosophy. After college he decided that journalism was the only profession that actually paid someone to write, and he received a Master's Degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C. He moved to the Boston area in the late 1970s and worked for several local weekly newspapers, including a chain weeklies that he founded in the 1984. After the chain was sold, he worked for The Boston Globe in a variety of roles over 11 years. Later her worked at The New England Journal of Medicine for 13 years as a director in the advertising department. He has published three novels. For a complete bio visit ... See less