Bio
J. Malcolm Garcia was born in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, IL. He attended Ripon College from 1975 to 1977. He transferred to Coe College in the fall of 1977 and graduated from Coe in May 1979. He wrote for The Coe Cosmos newspaper and was active in college theater.
As a social worker, Garcia worked with homeless people in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district for 14 years before he made the jump into journalism in 1997. He reported for The Kansas City Star newspaper from 1998 to 2009 when he began his freelance career. The tragedy of September 11th, 2001, gave him the opportunity to work in Afghanistan. Since then he has written on Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Haiti, Honduras, and Argentina among other countries. He is a recipient of the Studs Terkel Prize for writing about the working classes and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism.
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❝ Lyrical yet understated prose and the centering of Afghans’ own voices make this an indelible portrait of struggle and survival.❞
Publisher's Weekly -
❝ J. Malcolm Garcia’s impressive book of nonfiction short stories about extraordinary everyday people in Afghanistan is as gripping as any fiction I’ve read in years, full of plot twists, humor, sorrow, and grit. Part Dickens, part Studs Terkel, the book reveals its characters’ lives with a refreshing candor I defy anyone not to relish.❞
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