Thomas Rogers (1927–2007) was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was the author of four novels, including the National Book Award finalists The Pursuit of Happiness and The Confession of a Child of the Century by Samuel Heather. His third novel is At the Shores, and his final work, Jerry Engels, is its sequel. David Susskind produced a film based on The Pursuit of Happiness starring Barbara Hershey and Michael Sarrazin.Rogers graduated cum laude from Harvard University and received his doctorate from the University of Iowa in the program that is now the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1969, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a frequent guest at Yaddo and the Camargo Foundation. He had essays published in the American Review, Esquire, the Iowa Review, and the American Scholar. He taught creative writing at Pennsylvania State University for three decades as a professor of English and fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies.
