 James Carroll was born in Chicago in 1943, and raised in Washington where his father, an Air Force general, served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Carroll was educated at The Priory School in Washington , and at an American high school in Wiesbaden , Germany . He attended Georgetown University before entering the seminary. He received BA & MA degrees at St. Paul 's College, the Paulist Fathers' seminary in Washington . In 1965 he studied poetry with Allan Tate at the University of Minnesota . He was a Civil Rights worker, and community organizer in Washington and New York . He was ordained to the priesthood in 1969. Carroll was assigned by the Paulist Fathers and Richard Cardinal Cushing to Boston University where he served as Catholic Chaplain from 1969 to 1974. During those years he published numerous books on religious subjects, and a weekly column in the National Catholic Reporter, earning awards from the Catholic Press Association, and other organizations. He studied poetry with George Starbuck, and eventually published a book of poems. He remained active in the anti-war movement until the war ended. Carroll left the priesthood to become a writer. In 1974 he was Playwright-in-Residence at the Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge, MA. In 1976 he published his first novel, Madonna Red. Since then he has published eight additional novels, including Mortal Friends, Prince of Peace, and The City Below, a New York Times Notable Book of 1994. Carroll is an occasional contributor to numerous journals, including The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, and his op-ed column appears weekly in the Boston Globe. His memoir An American Requiem: God, My Father, And The War That Came Between Us won several prizes, including the 1996 National Book Award in Nonfiction. Carroll has lectured widely, notably delivering the Lowell Lecture at Harvard University , the Lowell Lecture at Boston College , the Frost Fellowship Lecture at Amherst College , and the Burke Lecture at the University of California at San Diego . He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on its Committee for International Security Studies, He is a member of the Council of PEN-New England, which he served for four years as Chair. He has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University , and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School , where he remains a Research Associate. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University . He serves as a Trustee of the Boston Public Library.
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