“I became a novelist as a teenager in a seminar with Saul Bellow, but when I quit school to write the great American novel, I discovered I lacked imagination. It took me many years of living to compensate for this lack, but eventually I acquired enough experience to write six novels. The Foundations of Kindness is the first — and last — of them. Most of it was written in 1975-6. The logues (prologue, dialogues, epilogues) were added between 2014 and 2018. After leaving Chicago I lived thirty-five years in the West Kootenays of British Columbia and six years in China. I presently live in the Victoria area of Vancouver Island.”