JOSEPH COWLEY was born on October 9, 1923. He graduated from Columbia University in 1947, interrupting his academic career to serve two and a half years with the Army Air Force during World War II. The last few months of service were spent overseas as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force. He received his M.A. from Columbia in 1948 and taught English at Cornell University before entering sales. Most of his career was spent writing and editing material on sales and management for The Research Institute of America. Taking early retirement in 1982 to devote himself to fiction, he moved with his wife Ruth to Lebanon, Ohio, to be near the eldest of their four children and the two grandchildren existent at the time. They now have seven grandchildren: Jesse, Noah, Sarah, Samantha, Eliot, Sophia, and Sean, and live on Long Island. Joseph Cowley is the author of the novels The Chrysanthemum Garden, Home by Seven, Landscape with Figures, Dust Be My Destiny, The House on Huntington Hill; the plays The Stargazers, Twin Bill, and A Jury of His Peers; a collection of shorter fiction called The Night Billy Was Born and Other Love Stories; and, with Robert Weisselberg, The Executive Strategist, An Armchair Guide to Scientific Decision-Making. His articles have appeared in trade and science journals, and his short stories in Prairie Schooner, New-Story, The Maryland Review, Ohio Short Fiction, and other literary journals and anthologies. He will be publishing an anthology, The Best of JOSEPH COWLEY for December release, and is currently writing a brief life of John Adams for the Busy Reader, which should be ready for publication in 2007, and working on a sequel to the adventure novel Dust Be My Destiny, and also writing a futuristic thriller called Don’t Shoot—I’m Not the Enemy. On the back burner are another short novel, and another historical play, this one about Leo Tolstoy.

Joseph Cowley, who's listed in Who's Who, International Who's Who of Writers and Authors, Strathmore's Who's Who and many other reference volumes, has also had his biography included in 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century, published by International Biographical Centre, Cambridgeshire, England. His bio also appears in National Register’s Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals in early 2005. Among the organizations he is or has been associated with are Mensa, Great Books, Authors Guild, and a 12-Step program.