D.B. McColl

D.B. McColl writes from Georgia, where the McColls and Crittendens have roots that reach back to Shellman. The land, the names, and the long memory of a place still matter to him.

Before the books there were other ways of paying attention. In the early 1970s he drew editorial cartoons for The Red & Black at the University of Georgia, winning the Impact Award in 1973 and again in 1974. He worked in advertising, film, and public broadcasting, and produced the PBS documentary series Saving Grace. He also holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and has flown cargo, charter, corporate, and Life-Flight missions—often at night, when the world is quieter and the stakes are clearer.

Those years taught him the same lesson in different languages: look closely, leave out what does not belong, and stay with a thing until it speaks. The novels and nonfiction that now appear under his imprint, The Choice of Words, carry that habit. They move from the Georgia coast to the Old West to the thin edge of consciousness, always asking what can be known and what must simply be lived with.