Brooks Clark was born in Nashville, grew up in Washington, D.C., and went to Dartmouth College. He was a writer-reporter at Sports Illustrated in New York for 10 years, a senior editor at Whittle Communications for five, an executive speechwriter for TVA, and a writer for the University of Tennessee, where he received an MFA in nonfiction writing in 2016 and teaches in the School of Journalism & Electronic Media. As a freelance magazine writer, he’s written for Electric Power & Light, Sports Illustrated, SI For Kids, SI For Kids’ Sports Parents, Family Life, The Washingtonian, The Washington Post Magazine, Working Mother, Creative Living, US Airways’ Attaché, Success!, the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Knoxville magazine, the Knoxville Business Journal, Metro Pulse, Knoxville Cityview, and UT magazines Torchbearer, Our Tennessee, and Noteworthy.