Homer Hickam is an American author and educator living in Virginia. He attended Union High School in Union Springs, Alabama and then received a bachelor's degree from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville with a master's degree in geology and worked as a coal miner for seven years before deciding to pursue a career in writing. His first book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir of My Early Years, which is about growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s and 1970s and his experience with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, was published in 2005
Read more
Hickam is the recipient of several awards including the 2007 Virginia Author Award for his work on Rocket Boys. He has been inducted into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame and is a member of the National Space Society.