Les Edgerton - Biography

Biography

Les Edgerton was born in Odessa, Texas. He grew up in Freeport, Texas and in and around South Bend, Indiana. He served four years in the U.S. Navy. Later, he was sentenced to two to five years in Pendleton Reformatory for second-degree burglary. Four years after getting out of prison, he attended Indiana University at South Bend, where he was elected Student Body President, was sports editor for the campus newspaper, and was head of the student athletic association, which began the school's first basketball team.

Later Edgerton entered a period of his life he refers to as a years-long odyssey, during which he:

• Sold and used drugs
• Worked for an escort service for older, wealthy women in New Orleans
• Sold life insurance
• Worked as a headhunter for a firm specializing in recruiting executives for businesses dealing with electronic warfare
• Was a sports reporter
• Won 16 state championships for hairstyling, a skill he learned in prison
• Co-hosted a cable-television show about fashion in New Orleans
• Made a television commercial
• Acted in a movie
• Was homeless and eating out of a dumpster
• Went through several marriages
• Attended A.A. meetings
• Began writing seriously

For more than twenty years he has lived in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He has a wife, a son, two grown daughters, and a grandson. Today, in his own words, ". . . he's all respectable and such, and you can invite him into your home and when he leaves you don't have to worry about counting the silverware." Edgerton's current activities include working his private online creating writing group and co-teaching via Skype a class with author Jenny Milchman for the New York Writer's Workshop.