James Morrow (born March 17, 1947) is an American novelist and short-story writer known for filtering large philosophical and theological questions through his satiric sensibility. Most of Morrow's oeuvre has been published as science fiction and fantasy, but he is also the author of two unconventional historical novels, The Last Witchfinder and Galápagos Regained. He variously describes himself as a "scientific humanist," a "bewildered pilgrim," and a "child of the Enlightenment". Morrow presently lives in State College, Pennsylvania with his second wife, Kathryn Smith Morrow, his son Christopher, and his two dogs. Early life and education James Kenneth Morrow was born in Germantown, Philadelphia, on March 17, 1947, the only child of Emily Morrow, née Develin, and William Morrow (no relation to the publisher of the same name). During World War II, the U.S. Army exempted Bill Morrow from the draft owing to his employment by the Midvale Steel Works. After the war, Emily and William bought a small house in the Philadelphia suburb of Roslyn, Pennsylvania, a choice driven largely by the sterling reputation of Abington Township's public-school system. James Morrow attributes his fiction-writing career directly to the humanities curriculum at Abington Senior High School. In particular, his exposure to James Giordano's tenth-grade World Literature class prompted him to imagine himself one day composing novels and stories inspired by the philosophically inclined authors in the syllabus, among them Dante, Voltaire, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Camus, and Ibsen. Throughout his adolescence Morrow produced a series of 8mm genre films with his friends, including Joe Adamson, who ultimately made documentary films in Los Angeles; David Stone, who became a Hollywood sound editor; and George Shelps, who remained in the Philadelphia area and became a suburban planner. The output of “Abington-International Movie Company” encompassed adaptations of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Derleth and Schorer’s “The Return of Andrew Bentley,” and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which received an Honorable Mention in the 1964 Kodak Movie News Teen-Age Movie Contest. While an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Morrow met his living expenses by working as a filmmaker for the Philadelphia Public Schools, shooting and editing a series of 16mm films documenting and celebrating the innovations for which the system was famous in the late 1960s. Upon receiving his BA degree from Penn in 1969, Morrow moved to Somerville, Massachusetts, so he could attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Pre-fiction career After