ABOUT THE aUTHOR

Born and raised in South Florida, Borsten received a BA in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in l977 and began to write in earnest the summer after his senior year when he lost his voice (and very nearly his life) after breaking his larynx--almost always a fatal injury--while playing basketball. He used the injury to persuade himself (along with his parents and anyone else who needed persuading) that writing was the perfect vocation for one who could no longer speak. His voice returned unexpectedly two months later, but by then he’d already committed himself, for better or worse, to the writing life, and was auditing creative writing courses with the award winning short story writer and novelist Doris Betts, whose written feedback, after she’d read his first attempt at a short story, was a warning to go out and slug down a few beers so that he might adequately brace himself for the rest of her critical comments.

Borsten motored across the country in a 1970 Volkswagon Bus with his then girlfriend, Kim Crane, an elementary school classroom assistant and caterer, who, six months earlier, had fallen in love with him out of pity when his entire right arm fell dead asleep while he was attempting to make his first pass at her. They planted themselves in Corvallis, Oregon, where, 40 years later, they still live. They’ve now been married for 38 years and have two children, both now living in Portland (Sarah, a poet, who works as a Human Resources specialist and is a member of a Bollywood dance troupe, and Luke, a musician who has toured the US in a Toyota Corolla and the Baltic Sea in a cruise ship as the pub guitarist, and currently works as an artist manager and videographer.

Since arriving in Oregon 40 years ago, Borsten has sought and performed writer-friendly work as a dishwasher, a waiter, a newspaper deliverer, a direct caregiver in a group home for intellectually disabled adults, a privately contracted caregiver for a young woman experiencing anorexia, a skills trainer Linn County Developmental Disablities, and a Program and Services Coordinator for the Benton County Developmental Diversity Program. He is currently working as a medication specialist for Personalized Independence, a private agency that serves adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.