Author Biography

A Mississippi native, Carson Medley was born in Oxford and raised in Jackson. He attended Ole Miss for one year before heeding to Mark Twain’s advice not to “let schooling interfere with your education.” Following Jack Kerouac’s calling, he went “On the Road” for the next three years, traveling throughout the United States in his 1971 VW van with his golden retriever, Jake. He also traveled extensively in Europe and lived for several months in the Cyclade Islands of Greece, where he ran a watermelon business, and in the streets of Athens, where he did everything from making hair wraps to selling his poetry in the alleys of Plaka Square. After being robbed and beaten within an inch of his life, Carson came home and attended Cuesta College, then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley; he earned his BA in History and was the Commencement Speaker for the class of ’97. Although then headed for law school, Carson instead decided to pursue his real dream as a writer of novels and screenplays. He spent the next seven years toiling in the trenches of corporate America as a debt collector, writing all the while; he completed two novels and three screenplays during this time. Burned out on churning corporate profit, Carson went to Graduate School and earned MA degrees in both English and Education. In addition to Ain’t Whistlin’ Dixie No More, he has also just completed the novel Fat Dreams of Pushing Daisies and adapted Ain’t Whistlin’ Dixie No More and Fat Dreams of Pushing Daisies for the screen. He has also written the screenplay Catching Trout and the play Mop Now. Currently a “freeway flyer,” Carson teaches English Composition and Argument at both Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and Cuesta College. He lives with his wife in San Luis Obispo, California.