Jeff Houlahan
I am an ecologist and conservation biologist, and for the last 20 years I have had an active research program studying animal and plant biology. But it has been a circuitous route to this place. I was an Air Force brat and grew up in a series of military towns in Canada – Calgary, North Bay, Kapuskasing, Ottawa, and a couple of Canadian Air Force bases in Germany including Lahr and Baden-Sollingen.
I’ve been a waiter, a security guard (there is nothing less hip than being a 19-year-old security guard in full uniform at a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show), a bartender, made pool liners (a much tougher job than it sounds), delivered mail on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (I didn’t see any evidence that we were a national security threat to America… but they may not have been telling me everything), and played guitar in a punk band called The Rainkings (named after Henderson The Rain King).
Along the way, I earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and B. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Ottawa. I met and married my wife, Kim, between my two undergraduate degrees and we had three children, Joe, Liam and Chelsea, who seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. I had a short post-doctoral stint at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It was in Albuquerque that I first saw a sign saying “please leave your guns at the door” that wasn’t meant as a joke. And that’s all I have to say about that.
In New Mexico, I worked with one of the leading ecologists in the world, a guy named James Brown – probably the third most famous person with that name. But, for folks with a literary bent, Jim’s greatest claim to fame is that he was Barbara Kingsolver’s M. Sc. supervisor at The University of Arizona. Barbara received her degree sometime between 1983 and 1985 and published The Bean Trees in 1988, so there is a chance that book may have been in the works while she was studying with Jim.
It was after that time in Jim Brown’s lab that I accepted the position of professor at UNB – where I continue to do research and teach to this day. And all along I’ve been writing – short stories, songs and, over the last 10 years, full-length novels.
I have published a half dozen short stories in on-line journals but probably my greatest claim to writing ‘cred’ is that I signed a three-book deal with Level Best Books for two crime novels I’ve completed (with the third to follow). Long Train Home was published in March, 2022 and Boom Boom's Last Call is scheduled to publish in January 2024.
I’ve been a waiter, a security guard (there is nothing less hip than being a 19-year-old security guard in full uniform at a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show), a bartender, made pool liners (a much tougher job than it sounds), delivered mail on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (I didn’t see any evidence that we were a national security threat to America… but they may not have been telling me everything), and played guitar in a punk band called The Rainkings (named after Henderson The Rain King).
Along the way, I earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and B. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Ottawa. I met and married my wife, Kim, between my two undergraduate degrees and we had three children, Joe, Liam and Chelsea, who seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. I had a short post-doctoral stint at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It was in Albuquerque that I first saw a sign saying “please leave your guns at the door” that wasn’t meant as a joke. And that’s all I have to say about that.
In New Mexico, I worked with one of the leading ecologists in the world, a guy named James Brown – probably the third most famous person with that name. But, for folks with a literary bent, Jim’s greatest claim to fame is that he was Barbara Kingsolver’s M. Sc. supervisor at The University of Arizona. Barbara received her degree sometime between 1983 and 1985 and published The Bean Trees in 1988, so there is a chance that book may have been in the works while she was studying with Jim.
It was after that time in Jim Brown’s lab that I accepted the position of professor at UNB – where I continue to do research and teach to this day. And all along I’ve been writing – short stories, songs and, over the last 10 years, full-length novels.
I have published a half dozen short stories in on-line journals but probably my greatest claim to writing ‘cred’ is that I signed a three-book deal with Level Best Books for two crime novels I’ve completed (with the third to follow). Long Train Home was published in March, 2022 and Boom Boom's Last Call is scheduled to publish in January 2024.
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