David SealDavid O. Seal was born in 1946 and raised in Minne-sota. He attended St. Olaf College and graduated Magna cum Lauda and Phi Beta Kappa. He received an M.A. and a Ph.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago, where he studied with Norman Maclean ad Wayne Booth. His dissertation was an interpretation of three problematic memoirs: Gibbon's loose collections of drafts and strategies, Coleridge's collage-like Biographia Literaria, and Henry Adams's Education, with its mysterious elision of twenty years of his married and professional life. He taught English for thirty-seven years at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, retiring as Full Professor, with classes in autobiographical writing, fairy tales, dreams, travel writing, and short fiction. He also taught undergraduates and graduate students for six months at Zhongshan Daxue, Guangzhou, in the People's Republic of China in 1985, and again in Chengdu for a month in 1992. He raised a daughter, chaired the department, volunteered at the zoo, and wrote locally on community issues. He was Tacoma's The News Tribune's first Guest Columnist, and his by-line appeared well over a dozen times. He also wrote two articles, including a cover story edited by David Brewster, for The Seattle Weekly.He's had a particular interest in elephants. He published articles on a local zoo elephant who had her own troubled history. He observed elephants in the wild in Thailand and Tanzania, and spent a month in India interviewing elephant experts, accompanying them into the field to observe their research, and published articles about them in professional elephant manager journals. He also published articles on dreams, on creativity in teaching, on Biblical scholarship, and on the poet Robert Bly.In his free time, he back-packed, climbed, and competed in sprint and Olympic triathlons. He passed the Basic Climbing class with the Tacoma Mountaineers.He is a drafted U.S. Army Vietnam-era veteran, trained on the Redeye shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, and serving as a sergeant with the 3rd Infantry Division in Schweinfurt, West Germany. He also served with the Merchant Marine for three months on the Great Lakes.He and his wife live in Hood River, Oregon. Read More Read Less