Born and bred a West Coaster, Caren always dreamed of being an artist or animator for Disney…
A graduate of Franciscan University and the University of Dallas, her theology degrees have served to systematize her imagination and love of all things creative. She has files full of wild dreams and inventions logged in her grey matter–she wishes she were a contemplative mystic, but in reality craves chit chat with saints, on earth and in heaven.
Her wild faux-Hoosier family and Italian hunk of a husband love her madly, if they can ever get her to shut up.
Doug, like his wife Shawn, was raised an Army brat, but he always returned home to his native Alabama. He realized he had no idea what he was doing in college and joined the Coast Guard, serving as a boat crewman in the Florida Keys (rough duty, I know).
He chose LSU for his undergraduate studies for a perfectly rational reason: he was chasing a woman (soon to be his wife). He then attended UNC Chapel Hill for graduate work, focusing on 19th century American literature and southern literature. He completed his Ph.D. and accepted his first job offer from the University of Mobile, a mid-size Baptist school in Alabama.
Once in Mobile, he and Shawn ended years of dilly-dallying and were received into the Catholic Church. They were Catholics in a great old Catholic town. Their kids are natives to both.
He spent the better part of two decades teaching everything from poetry workshops to Magical Realism, building an Honors program with great colleagues and students, and grading endless stacks of composition papers. He found time to publish a smattering of academic articles and his first book: A Disturbing and Alien Memory: Southern Writers Writing History (LSU Press, 2008).
This past fall, he and Shawn switched places; she took a full-time position teaching geography at South Alabama and he moved to part-time teaching to focus on writing, podcasting, and photography. It was time to extend the conversation and pursue the truth of things with a wider group of friends.
Pair of Fools Podcast 