This is the website of Thomas Rogers, author of Jerry Engels and At the Shores. It is currently under construction, and thus many links are not yet active. Please check back soon for updates.

Born in 1927, Thomas Rogers was educated at the University of Chicago Laboratory High School until he was drafted, after the guns of World War II had fallen silent, in 1945. He spent time in Alaska, serving as a Security Clerk and Historian of the 59th Air and Air Communications Service Group, rising to the rank of Sergeant. After his discharge, the GI Bill paid his way at Harvard, and he graduated Cum Laude in 1950.

Rogers spent the next year in France, writing short stories, before returning to the United States in the summer of 1951. He spent four years teaching at the University of Iowa and attending the Writer’s Workshop, until he received his PhD. In 1960, after six years teaching at the University of Chicago, Rogers moved on to a teaching job at Penn State, where he completed his first novel, The Pursuit of Happiness (New American Library, 1968). The book was a finalist for the National Book Award (along with a book by his Penn State officemate, John Barth), and has been widely translated. In 1971, Columbia Pictures released a film version of the book produced by David Susskind and directed by Robert Mulligan, and starring Michael Sarrazin, Barbara Hersehy, and Ruth White.

In 1972, Rogers published The Confession of a Child of the Century, for which the Philadelphia Inquirer hailed him as “one of America’s finest writers.” It won the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and was again a finalist for the National Book Award (again, along with Barth, who won that year with Chimera). His third novel, At the Shores, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1980, which the New York Times called “a blessing on the beginnings of love.” Then, for almost twenty years, Rogers published very little fiction as he became immersed in writing a sequel to At the Shores. During that time he wrote for Esquire, The Iowa Review, and Chicago Sun-Times. He is currently at work on another Jerry Engels novel.