Dan Stark was born in Oxnard, California, in 1952. The first 50 years of his life were uneventful. He grew up in Orlando, Florida, before Disney World and during the height of the Cold War. This and frequent encounters with the large roaches common in Florida may have contributed to his decision to study philosophy and the law. He practiced law for 27 years, the last 21 years at AT&T, before retiring as the company’s vice president in August 2004.

Dan Stark retired at 52 to devote more time to his life. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1997 and had open-heart surgery to fix a leaking valve in 2000. He had “Deep Brain Stimulation,” a form of brain surgery in 2005, which successfully addressed the worst of his Parkinson’s symptoms. In 2009, he had a heart attack while walking his dog Coop. He is, in short, in wonderful health.

Between surgeries, Dan also began to write. The story “Silence of the Bunnies” was published by the Washington Post in October 2004, followed by “Living Large with Parkinson’s” in June 2005 and “Wired for Hope” in June 2006. Silence of the Bunnies, his first book, includes those three and sixteen other stories and essays. Stark published his second book, “Gelding Goliath,” in 2012. It offers an inside and personal account of AT&T’s demise. Vampires, a novel about the legal profession, was published in 2019, followed by More Muttering from the Rabbits, a sequel to The Silence of the Bunnies. 

Dan lives in Ashville, NC. He is trying to determine the cosmic consequences of publishing his next book.