Ken Mercer

I was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1962. A few years later, I watched the city burn from the window of my father’s office during the race riots of ‘67. I grew up middle class in a housing development that only offered homes in two different styles, so every other house was exactly the same. You needed to use creative paint schemes if you wanted to stand out My first gig as a professional writer was for a daily newspaper in western Massachusetts. I’d been reading a lot of the 1970s New Journalism, and made up my mind that what I really wanted to be when I grew up was gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. At the newspaper in Massachusetts, I was fortunate to work for a supportive editor, but the reality of the job was a whole lot different from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.