Author Rap Sheet

Scott Oglesby grew up in the hinterlands of the “Ark-La-Tex,” a respectable region in the good ol’ Southern USA. After obtaining a BA from the University of Arkansas, he spent the next twenty years tripping around Cleveland, LA and San Francisco working in civil rights, public schools and social services, before finally settling down in S.F. There he discovered espresso and became so excited that he opened his own coffee house, "Simple Pleasures Café," on a fog-banked avenue not far from Golden Gate Park. Defying the Starbucks juggernaut, the cafe continues today as a neighborhood institution. Indulging new muses, Scott then reinvented himself as a photographer, singer, theater artist and comedy writer. Eventually, his Southern genes and inner demons pushed him over the edge to novelist.

His current last stop is NYC where his feature, No Radio, an account of his real-life adventures as a beleagured Manhattan motorist, was published in New York’s West Side Spirit. And down South, Arkansas’ historic Lafayette County Democrat serialized his church reunion story, Homecoming, to local acclaim. With Riding High, Scott now joins the breadline club of first-time novelists. He’s been threatening that it will be his last and only novel—but then again he said that about his first marriage.

Photo by Peter Monroe.