Paul Roach was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. As an undergraduate he attended Loyola University of Chicago, with a major in English Literature.
Paul changed course after graduation and attended Medical School at Rush Medical College on a military scholarship. He Interned in Surgery at the University of California, trained in General Surgery at the University of Maryland, and sub specialized in Surgical Oncology at the University of Chicago. During his 26-year (so far) career within the U.S. Navy, he has served in a variety of capacities aboard ships and in the field: as a physician for aviation squadrons, as a General Surgeon in an overseas hospital in Europe, as a Surgical Oncologist in stateside hospitals, and as a trauma surgeon, far-forward, in direct support of combat missions.
Paul’s first novel, The End, was conceived in 2010 while in preparation for a major military offensive in Helmand Province, Afghanistan; his second novel, Rogues and Prodigies, was conceived while doing the same in Mosul and in Erbil, northeastern Iraq and Kurdistan. His memoir Citizen Surgeon is a slice-of-life description of the experience of being a combat surgeon in immediate support of the U.S. Marines and ISAF Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.
His favorite living novelist is Ian McEwan; favorite novelists overall are Mikhail Bulgakov, Joseph Conrad, and Earnest Hemingway; favorite short story writers are Vladimir Nabokov and also Hemingway; favorite playwrights are William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw; favorite poets are Wislawa Szymborska and T. S. Elliott.
His current work, Rogues and Prodigies, is the second book of a two-book series. It depicts the struggles and adventures of a small group of spirits as they attempt in desperate circumstances to help the humans rescue themselves from Homo sapiens’ fatal proclivities for global- and for self-destruction. The series’ genre is a North American offshoot of magical realism, or more conveniently, Fantasy. Rogues and Prodigies is in final production phases and will be ready for multicast serial production, and for conventional publication, in the very near future.
