Dennis Must: Biography

HOME • BIBLIOGRAPHY • UNSOLICITED EDITOR COMMENTS
INTERVIEWS • BIOGRAPHY • BOOKSTORE

“We write to taste life twice.” —Anais Nin

I was born and raised in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1956 from Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania, with a major in Philosophy. Following two years at Princeton Theological Seminary, I decided against entering the clergy to attend the playwright’s workshop at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Thereafter I taught at various locations in Pittsburgh and then in New York City while writing, directing and co-producing my own plays with an artist friend and collaborator, John Hawkins, in the late sixties and early seventies. It was a fecund period of experimental work in the non-commercial theatre.

Following a brief time in Maine, my wife, Aviva, and I finally settled in Boston in 1978—she to pursue her doctorate and I to seek permanent employment to support a new and growing family. Eventually I co-founded a successful commercial real estate firm, Corporate Space, Inc., where I served as Executive Vice President for over a decade. When the financial downturn occurred in the banking and real estate industry in 1990 and 1991, our company closed its doors. Personally, it was a godsend. For years I had been wanting to return to writing, but believed the opportunity had passed.

I remain grateful for the years I spent teaching, but attribute much of whatever insight and skill my writing may manifest to life experiences gained outside academia and in various jobs that include: cabinetmaker, short-order cook, lightning rod installer, florist, bartender, bellhop, general laborer in a glass factory, a steel mill, on highway construction, and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.