OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF WALTER COFFEY
AUTHOR OF CIVIL WAR FICTION
BIOGRAPHY
Walter was born in 1971 in Joliet, Illinois, and was restless at an early age. His interests changed from day to day, and in grade school he started drawing picture books and writing short stories. His early influence was H.G. Wells, and so his early stories were mostly science-fiction. Walter was first recognized for writing at Dirksen Junior High School, winning a contest with a story that was inspired by Wells’s novel War of the Worlds.
In high school, Walter competed on the wrestling team, played for the tennis team, worked on the school newspaper, and wrote for the school’s literary magazine. His writing influences shifted to naturalism, as he began reading such turn-of-the-century authors as Upton Sinclair (The Jungle), Frank Norris (McTeague), and Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie). Walter was also fascinated by political novels like Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) and Animal Farm (George Orwell), but his favorite novel was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which remains his favorite to this day. Walter graduated from Joliet Central High School with honors in 1989.
Walter attended Joliet Junior College and wrote briefly for the school’s literary magazine. But he gradually drifted away from writing, and instead took up studying history, radio, and filmmaking. He graduated in 1992 with an Associates’ Degree in Liberal Arts.
Continuing his education, Walter began attending Loyola University of Chicago in the fall of 1992. He took a philosophy course, where he read Plato’s Republic and various works by Friedrich Nietzsche. This, combined with George Orwell’s 1984, inspired Walter to return to writing and complete his first novel. He took off a semester to complete the book, a futuristic political thriller, but it was never published. So Walter drifted away from writing again and resumed his college studies.
Walter worked as a sportscaster for radio station WKBM in Wilmington, Illinois from 1993 to 1994, and at Loyola he produced a handful of amateur films and took several history courses. He graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in radio and film communications.
It didn’t take long for Walter to realize that radio and filmmaking were not for him, and history was not a very lucrative profession. Seeking a fresh start, he moved to Arizona in 1996, settling in Mesa, then Chandler. He took a job at a health management company as a trainer, and his urge to write soon resurfaced.
After taking a few years off, Walter began writing short stories. One of these stories was recognized for exceptional writing by the Quincy Writers’ Guild in 2000, but never published. He also wrote several novels, none of which were completed. Soon, his interest in history bled into his writing, and Walter began writing historical fiction.
In the meantime, Walter tried other jobs, including a brief stint as a high school history teacher. He eventually returned to the health management company and became a technical writer, documenting procedures and writing instructional manuals. The direct, descriptive style of this type of writing helped Walter improve his craft.
The Liberty Legion, released in August 2004, was Walter’s first published novel, and two sequels, Redemption In The Field and Roth's Reckoning, have earned acclaim as well. He is currently working on a fourth novel as well as other writing projects, and he continues his full-time job as a systems analyst while residing in Houston, Texas with his wife Gianna. His current interests include writing, running, cooking and baseball (go White Sox!).
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