Gary Nilsen was born and raised in Brooklyn and on Long Island, New York, but his career and interests have taken him far afield. In the early 1980s he spent five years living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia while working for an international group of companies. A decade later, his interest in underwater archaeology, found him teamed with a research fellow from The Institute for Nautical Archaeology and working on the excavation of an ancient shipwreck in the Red Sea. Gary has written articles on marine archaeology, appeared on a special edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, authored three novels, and received an MFA in Fiction Writing. During his tenure in the masters’ program, Gary was awarded the university’s Robert J. Begiebing prize for a writer who demonstrated high literary promise. He currently resides in New York with his love Nancy and their two Old English Sheepdogs, Harry and Nana.

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