Robert F. Smallwood

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Robert Smallwood at Hotel Nacional, Havana, Cuba

Robert Smallwood lights a cigar in La Paz, Mexico

Robert F. Smallwood is an American writer and technologist born in 1959 in Davenport, Iowa. He grew up in nearby Bettendorf, where he was an athletic, academic, and musical standout. After attending the University of Massachusetts Boston on a scholarly exchange program he graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1982 with honors and degrees in Business Management and Psychology. In 2000, Smallwood completed work on his Master of Business Administration degree at Loyola University New Orleans.

Smallwood moved to New Orleans where he worked for Burroughs Corporation (later Unisys after a merger with Sperry) selling mainframe computers to commercial banks. Later he worked for Wang Laboratories in the same field. In 1991 he became an independent IT consultant and in 1995 he merged with and co-founded IMERGE Consulting. A prolific writer on IT topics, he has published over 100 articles in trade journals.

He had begun working on his first novel, a New Orleans-based murder mystery, when Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina, Smallwood's account of his experience during the storm and in its aftermath, was his first book and the first personal account of the disaster to be published. One of the "five people" was Smallwood's friend and neighbor Harry Anderson, the comic actor who starred in Night Court, a popular 1980's sitcom.[1] In 2006 Smallwood embarked on a 21-city book tour[2] and interviews on C-SPAN (BookTV), BBC Radio, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABCNews.com and other major media outlets. He also published his first play that year, "Brando, Tennessee & Me." In 2007 he edited and published "Prisoners of Katrina" and in 2008 he published his first nonfiction tech book, "Taming the Email Tiger" and his first novel, "Jackson Squared."

As the executive director of the Louisiana Writers' Foundation,[3] Smallwood was responsible for organizing a "Black & White Ball" at the Hotel Monteleone on the 40th anniversary of Truman Capote's famous New York event.[4] The event was held to raise donations for writers struggling to return to post-Katrina New Orleans, in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity. Honorees included noted Romanian writer and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu, Louisiana Poet Laureate Brenda Marie Osbey, and poet Dave Brinks. News anchor Angela Hill emceed the festivities.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Smallwood, Robert 2 (2005). The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina. BookSurge. ISBN 1419617249. 
  2. ^ Prescott, Jean. "A tale of New Orleans after Katrina: Deckhead goes right here", The Sun Herald, August 10, 2006. 
  3. ^ Jones, Jeffrey. "New Orleans writers struggle to pen rebirth stories", The Washington Post, December 18, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-05-25. 
  4. ^ Burdeau, Cain. "Big Easy Recreates Capote's Masked Ball", The Associated Press, December 2, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-05-25.