SUNNY Award-winning author Roger A. Smith was always fascinated by railroads, canals, the antebellum era, and social justice issues, so he naturally gravitated to his first career as a high school history teacher. Since then, he has gone wherever passion and curiosity dictated: co-owning a summer camp, farming, founding a participatory science museum, co-owning a wilderness expedition program, teaching entrepreneurship at the college level, woodworking, and leading a rural arts organization. As the author of Rian Krieger’s Journey, he draws lore and wisdom from all those professions and joy from again making history come alive to his constituents. 
Rog and his wife raised three children on a farm in central Pennsylvania. Their transgender son is the inspiration for Rian Krieger’s Journey; an additional motivation to write with empathy about characters—and entire communities—that have been shoved to the margins of history.