Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with degrees in Philosophy and History. He has been a high school teacher and costume jewelry salesman. He is the author of four books of fiction and two books of nonfiction. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Sutton lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

A More Detailed Biography

After playing two years of junior college football in Los Angeles, Joseph Sutton entered the University of Oregon in 1960 on a football scholarship. He didn’t become an All-American running back as he had wished. What happened was that a knee injury led to his getting on the bad side of his coach. Hence, he was a fourth string football player who rarely saw action.

A fellow fourth stringer asked him one day, “What are you going to do in life?”

“I’m going to be a writer,” Sutton blurted out. “I’m going to let the whole world know what it feels like for a fourth stringer to be treated like cannon fodder.” It was the first time the thought of being a writer entered his mind.

Upon graduating Oregon with degrees in philosophy and history, Sutton joined the Coast Guard reserve. Late in the morning on November 22, 1963, their ship docked in Alameda, CA, the crew heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. That night, because the president’s death hit him so hard, he did something he had never done before: he picked up a pen and started writing down his thoughts and feelings. Little did he know he’d be doing the same thing to this day.

After completing six months of active duty, Sutton started teaching social studies at Fremont High School in South Central Los Angeles. Five years later, in 1969, he quit the teaching profession to follow his dream of becoming a writer. His first project was a novel, A Class of Leaders, about a white history teacher in a predominately black high school who throws the book away and lets his students teach. Sutton’s next work, a novel called Highway Sailor, deals with a man hitting the highways of America in search of himself and his country. Both novels, after receiving a ton of rejections over the years, will finally see the light of print in 2010.

Ever since his Coast Guard days in Alameda, Sutton had always wanted to live in San Francisco. In 1977 he made the move. Within a span of four years, he met Joan Bransten, married her and they had a son, Raymond. Before Raymond was born, Sutton would write, wait until his money ran low, substitute in the secondary schools of San Francisco and start writing again when he could afford it. After his son was born, writing took a backseat to supporting his family, so he returned to teaching full-time.

Sutton taught for three years until he contracted asthma in 1984. He took his doctor’s advice and quit the profession due to the stress it caused him. He soon landed a job as a sales representative for a costume jewelry company and within six months his asthma faded away. Although he was making twice the money he had made as a teacher, selling costume jewelry didn’t give much meaning to his life. The only thing that mattered to him was writing. But how was he going to support a family when all he had earned in fifteen years as a writer was $4000? In his fourth year of jewelry sales, Sutton got the idea to compile a book of quotations on all aspects of health. His idea caught a publisher’s eye and Words of Wellness: A Treasury of Quotations for Well-Being was released in 1991. Since then, he’s published three more books, in addition to the two novels coming out in 2010.

Sutton never forgot what he told his Oregon teammate when asked what he wanted to do in life: “…to be a writer.” The story “The Fourth Stringer” was published several years ago in his collection called The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories.