ROBERT TOWNSEND

Robert E Townsend comes from a long line––father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers––of soldiers, American and pre-American. Slavic on his mother’s, deep-south redneck on the father's side, his parents managed money poorly and told stories well. Spare, pithy, lasting the duration of a Pall Mall cigarette, the tales were to entertain while teaching. No one is completely useless, he was told. He can always serve as a bad example. He learned that storytellers are treasured, liars are vexing and both are often one and the same. However, when the skilled liar is armed, crazed and planning Armageddon, ambiguity in matters of war and peace and life and death have vexed the earth.

His stories and novels arise from family history, fables and stories told around the kitchen table as well as his own experiences in America’s late 20th century ambiguous wars, deceptions and counter-deceptions. Fluent in Russian and German with a growing vocabulary in French, Townsend is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BA), studied at Freies Universitat Berlin (Certifikat), and received his MA from Georgetown University (Russian Area Studies).