Thomas Cochran was raised in Haynesville, Louisiana. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he studied English and writing with, among others, William Harrison, John Clellon Holmes, Ben D. Kimpel, and James Whitehead. His idea at the time was to become a school teacher, but fate intervened when he was offered a chance to become a sportswriter instead. He took it because he thought that getting paid to attend ball games was akin to winning the lottery. It was not. It was, however, his writing boot camp. Covering everything from junior high track meets to professional rodeo, he learned during his decade at the sports desk how to compose prose under deadline pressure. His stories and columns for the Northwest Arkansas Times and The Springdale News earned several awards from the Arkansas Press Association. Ultimately bowed by the long hours and low pay, however, he returned to the U of A and his idea of becoming a school teacher, obtained his secondary certificate, and landed a position at Fayetteville High School. (Apparently, something in his nature drew him to long hours and low pay.) He soon realized that he had been right about his true calling in the first place, though the lessons he learned during his newspaper days proved invaluable to him at the classroom lectern – and at his own writing desk. He taught English at FHS for 25 years before retiring to use his time as he pleases.
Although Cochran left there many years ago, he has never stopped thinking of Haynesville as home, and the town is the model for Oil Camp, the setting of his three novels. The first, ROUGHNECKS, published by Harcourt, was a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature nominee. In an essay about YA sports fiction that appeared in School Library Journal, Chris Crowe called the book “…the best novel ever written about high school football.” Cochran finds the praise amusingly hyperbolic but is pleased to have it available as a blurb for his work. His other novels are RUNNING THE DOGS (“… heartwarming…poignant…a loving and believable tale of middle childhood.”-International Reading Association), published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, and UNCLE DREW AND THE BAT DODGER (“[The book] is wonderfully written. Its language is full of spirit and thick with resolve and confidence. It is highly recommended.”-Wendy Zollo, Historical Novel Society), published by Pelican. In addition to his fiction, Cochran has published poetry and essays in many print and online periodicals, including the Oxford American, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and Modern Drummer. Unlike his previous books, YITS YEVINS, which Regal House Publishing will publish in 2027, is not set in Oil Camp. Its location is “the town that was south of here and north of there, east of there and west of here.” In other words, it could be anywhere. His own town these days is Rogers, Arkansas, where he lives with his wife, Kate, in a house that was built in 1902 and sometimes acts like it.
