Constance O. Irvin has had a varied career, but one in which writing has always played an important part. Upon graduation from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo MI, she taught high school English and theatre appreciation at the college level. During the weekends and after school she could be found at a local grass airstrip practicing take-offs and landings. Before long she fulfilled a childhood dream and obtained a private pilot’s license.

Although teaching was a passion, one other life long hobby--photography-- prodded Connie to take another direction in her life pursuits. She walked away from teaching and for over ten years, worked as a freelance television news correspondent for a CBS affiliate in Michigan. The job was demanding in its deadlines and grueling in physical challenges, but during that time she photographed and wrote over 1,500 news items that covered arson to murder, villains to zebras ( the last having been filmed while on assignment in Kenya, East Africa).

From childhood on, she developed a love for the environment. In later life, as a freelancer, her by-line appeared for both photo and written articles in regional and national magazines as well as the Detroit News. Several of those published articles covered environmental issues. Her special fondness for wolves and their place in the environment played a big part in the setting of her first novel, The Seasons of a Heart.

Her second novel, The Walking Man, just released in September of 2007 is set in Alabama in 1950. It is a story of innocence lost in the tragic murder of a childhood friend and of the subsequent struggle, for nine-year-old Maggie Green, to understand who in the small community would do such a thing.

Click here to learn more about the Walking Man.

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