John Champagne (1960) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After attending three different undergraduate schools, he finally finished his degree and is now a proud graduate of the Thomas Hunter Honors Program, where he studied with Louise DeSalvo and Audre Lorde and completed his first novel The Blue Lady’s Hands , 1988. He subsequently received an MA in Film Studies from New York University and a PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh.
Champagne’s work traverses a variety of genres, including Italian studies, fiction, literary nonfiction, cultural criticism, and poetry. Dividing his time between Erie, where he is a professor of English at Penn State, and Perugia, he is married to Richard Krone.