Homer H. Hickam, Jr.

Homer H. Hickam, Jr. was born on February 19, 1943, the second son of Homer and Elsie Hickam, and was raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960 and from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in 1964 with a BS degree in Industrial Engineering. A U.S. Army veteran, Mr. Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967-1968. He served six years on active duty, leaving the service with the rank of Captain. Mr. Hickam has been a writer since 1969.

His first book, Torpedo Junction, a military history was published in 1989. In 1998, Mr. Hickam's second book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, the story of his life in the little town of Coalwood, West Virginia was published. It became an instant classic. Rocket Boys has since been translated into eight languages. Among its many honors, it was selected by the New York Times as one of its "Great Books of 1998" and was an alternate "Book-of-the-Month" selection for both the Literary Guild and Doubleday book clubs. Rocket Boys was also nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as Best Biography of 1998. In February, 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys (The title October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys).  

While working on his writing career, Mr. Hickam was employed as an engineer for the U.S. Army Missile Command from 1971 to 1981 assigned to Huntsville, Alabama, and Germany. He began employment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1981 as an aerospace engineer. During his NASA career, Mr. Hickam worked in spacecraft design and crew training. His specialties at NASA included training astronauts on science payloads, and extravehicular activities (EVA). He also trained astronaut crews for many Spacelab and Space Shuttle missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope deployment mission, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (the first Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Mr. Hickam was the Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program. 

Mr. Hickam's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon published in 1999. The Coalwood Way, a memoir of Homer's hometown he calls "not a sequel but an equal," was published in 2000. His third Coalwood memoir, a true sequel, titled Sky of Stone was published in 2001.    His final book about Coalwood was published in 2002, a self help/inspirational tome titled We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town That Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie October Sky. His latest work is The Ambassador's Son, published in 2005. It is the second of his series of popular novels about Josh Thurlow, a Coast Guard officer during World War II. The series began with The Keeper's Son in 2003, and will continue with The Far Reaches to be published in 2007.

Mr. Hickam is married to Linda Terry Hickam, an artist and his first editor and assistant. They love their cats and share their time between homes in Alabama and the Virgin Islands.

Books by Homer Hickam, Jr.:

The Coalwood Series

• Rocket Boys
• The Coalwood Way
• Sky of Stone
• We Are Not Afraid

The Josh Thurlow Series

• The Far Reaches - coming June 07
• The Ambassador’s Son
• The Keeper's Son
• Torpedo Junction

Stories of the Future and Past

• Back to the Moon