Alan Elliott Craven is a retired Shakespeare scholar and former college dean residing with his wife, Janice, in San Antonio, Texas. He has three adult children. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he lived in Lawrence, Kansas for a number of years. His family has deep Midwestern roots, the Cravens settling in Missouri before 1830. As boys, his father and uncle knew the outlaw Frank James in Kearney, Clay County, Missouri. His mother’s family moved to Kansas in 1861, the year the state was admitted to the Union. They homesteaded at Dry Ridge, Bourbon County, Kansas. Nine boys in the family fought for the Union in the Civil War, including his great-grandfather. In the presidential election of 1860, his great- great- grandfather and two other men were the only ones in their precinct to cast votes for Abraham Lincoln.