Robert Lee Dugan III is an Appalachian author and educator from
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Robert holds a B.S. in Business Administration & Management with an English minor and a M. A. in Teaching from Shepherd University and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Shenandoah University, where his research focused on academic integrity in modern classrooms.
Living and teaching in Virginia, he writes fiction inspired by the people, places,
and experiences of Appalachia, blending authentic regional settings with themes of
identity, faith, and moral ambiguity.
“I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write.
I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been
accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent.
If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.”
-Stephen King-