Notes from the Nineties: Stories and Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9784905426677)

Originally from Troy, New York, M. Thomas Apple spent part of his childhood in a tiny hamlet in the Helderbergs and his teenage years in a slightly larger village in the Adirondacks. He played high school baseball for four years and was a decent base-stealer, adequate outfielder, and terrible batter. Occasionally he dreams of the sole (running) homerun he hit on a 3-0 count, and the subsequent beaning that followed during the next at-bat. He studied languages and literature as an undergraduate student at Bard College and later creative writing at the University of Notre Dame du Lac, where he wrote a controversial, award-winning weekly column for the student-run daily newspaper, The Observer. After further studies in education at Temple University, he now teaches global issues and English as a second language at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. He lives in a house co-designed with his wife and partially decorated by his two daughters, nestled in the foothills of the mountains and surrounded by lots and lots of Japanese cedar and cicada. A holder of a 4th degree black belt (4-dan) in Shorinji Kempo, he also enjoys hiking and running, as long as his asthma behaves itself.