Biography
Michael Bishop is the son of Leotis ("Lee") Bishop (born 1920 in Fry's Mill, Arkansas) and Maxine ("Mac") Elaine Matison (born 1920 in Ashland, Nebraska). His parents met in the summer of 1942 when his father, a recent enlistee of the Air Force, was stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska. Bishop's childhood was the peripatetic life of a military brat. He went to kindergarten in Tokyo, Japan, and he spent his senior year of high school in Seville, Spain. His parents divorced in 1951, and Bishop spent summers wherever his father happened to be based.
Bishop entered the University of Georgia in 1963, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1967, before going on to complete a master's degree in English. In 1969, he married Jeri Ellis Whitaker of Columbus, Georgia. He taught English (including a course in science fiction) at the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968 to 1972. After his service career, he taught composition and English literature at the University of Georgia in Athens. A son, Jamie, was born in 1971, and a daughter, Stephanie was born in 1973. Bishop left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer. In those early years of freelance writing, he would occasionally work as a substitute teacher in the public schools and as a stringer for the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus.
In 1996, Bishop became writer-in-residence at LaGrange College located near his home (built in the 1890s) in Pine Mountain, Georgia. He has held this position ever since. Bishop teaches creative-writing courses and an occasional January interim-term course.
He and Jeri, a counselor at Rosemont Elementary School, have two grandchildren, Annabel and Joel, by their daughter Stephanie. On April 16, 2007, their son Jamie, a Lecturer in German and I.T. Studies, was one of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.
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