Daughtry, Philip James: - Philip Daughtry's family left a Northumbrian coal mining village in 1953 for Canada when he was eleven. After a year outside Toronto, underweight from work on a miserly relative's pig farm, he was sent to a Cree reserve where a Quaker aunt's kindness and a local trapper's guidance awakened his quest for wilderness. The imprint of this period of North Woods exploration (No cement, no clocks, no school, no blame!) continues to inspire Daughtry's writing. Emigrating to the United States in 1956, he worked throughout high school in Manhattan where he frequented Greenwich Village hoping to trace Jack Kerouac's road west, and played soccer for the University of Denver before dropping out to work ranches. He eventually hitched to San Francisco, where City Lights offered a first exposure to West Coast poets. He is the author of RUNAWAY ANGELS (Mercury House, 2020), NIGHT RIDE WITH DAHLIA (Mercury House, 2013), and THE CENTAUR'S SON: STORIES (Mercury House, 2007). He currently resides in Topanga Canyon, California.