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The true power of voice in writing was revealed to him when he read To Kill A Mockingbird in a single day, and spoke with a southern accent for a week afterward. Later, in High School, he discovered mythology, Emily Dickinson, and poetry. Not knowing what education to pursue, thinking of writing as nothing more than a hobby, Eric’s mother, Cheri Bieber, suggested he take on a trade like plumbing. He scoffed at the idea then, but thinking back on it, he realizes it wasn’t half bad thinking. However, for whatever self-hating reason, Eric chose to attend Champlain College with a major in professional writing. He has no regrets.

 

Halfway through his first semester, the head of the Writing Department, Tim Brookes, approached Eric and explained that he wasn’t cut out for the program and seriously recommended that he switch majors. Tim laid out several very good reasons for this, all of them forgotten by now, and Eric understood the weight and truth of every one, and his strength and resilience grew as each was listed. At the end of the conversation, Eric promised to prove to Tim that his concerns held no water. By graduation, Eric had received a B.S. in Professional Writing, served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the school’s Literary and Arts Journal, created and published his own poetry magazine (with two good friends), and received an award for poetry and an award for editor from the school.

 

Burlington, Vermont had grown to become home, but after graduating, he decided to try out New York City, crashing on a friend’s couch in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He pulled a few odd jobs cutting and bailing christmas trees, soliciting for donations to charity in Midtown Manhattan, and working as a production assistant on The Michael J. Fox Show (during which he not only got to see the big man himself but also Christopher Lloyd, which was a big star-struck moment for him). He even got robbed at gun point one cold winter night (it doesn’t get much more New York than that). Eric eventually found actual writing work as a blogger for a travel website. He was doing what he vowed he’d never do: journalism and social media. The job taught him how to initiate and maintain email correspondence, navigate those ever wild “news” feeds like twitter and tumblr, and even had him writing more than two thousand words a day (which would make Stephen King happy); however, a time came for him to move on.

 

Eric is currently in the midst of editing his friend’s novel (a little over ninety thousand words currently), as well as writing his own novel. You can find an excerpt of his novel under the title Ghosts In The Mind on the Short Stories page. What else is Eric Bieber up to? Go ahead and ask him yourself. He’ll have a different answer for you every day.

ABOUT ME

Eric Bieber was born and raised in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. He spent most of his childhood either playing make-believe games involving treasure and shootouts, or jumping on the furniture and trying to use plastic grocery bags as parachutes. He was born the youngest of two brothers, one six years older, and the other nine. He was repeatedly warned by his parents to “never be a brother!” He promised his parents he wouldn’t, but when he entered his teens, he—according to his parents—broke that promise. With young adulthood came a taste for devilry: alcohol, pot, skitching around on his longboard, and he even once tried to steal a peacock with a hamper to no avail. He grew up spending winters in his family’s condo on Okemo Mountain in Vermont. He was never one for the parks, instead favoring the soft touch of motoring through the fresh powder of the out-of-bounds, untouched parts of the mountain where he could get lost in himself. All his life he has tried to write a piece that captures the pureness of these sacred rides, and as of yet, he is still pursuing this.

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