Growing up in Danbury, Conn., Brett Garamella loved sports and the outdoors. He enjoyed playing catch or shooting baskets with his friends or family, and then playing alone when everyone else went inside at dusk. He was an above average student, but he'd rather make a foul shot or scare his mother with a garter snake in the backyard than read a book or do his homework.

That changed in college. The wait ended his freshman year at the University of Vermont, where he enjoyed reading history and literature and writing research papers. He found just as much pleasure in reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich as he did shooting a jump shot. After failing to make the Vermont basketball team as a freshman walk-on, he wrote for the school newspaper The Vermont Cynic, and became its sports editor. After his sophomore year he transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a journalism degree while cramming in as many political science classes as possible. Garamella wrote for the school newspaper The Daily Tar Heel and became the sports editor for the Blue & White magazine. Each summer during college he wrote for a daily or weekly newspaper. It was in a creative sports writing class, however, that he gained the greatest knowledge and confidence as an aspiring writer. Still today, Garamella attributes that class, taught by former Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Crothers, as the most important influence on his decision to become a writer.

Garamella's long nights in the library paid off. Twice he was chosen as one of two Carolina students for the annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program in the personal/profile category. In his final semester, he took an early 19 th century American literature class. Reading the likes of Hemingway and Twain and Fitzgerald interested him. Maybe I can write like them, he thought. He read more fiction and began writing a few of his own short stories.

Just a few months after graduation, in August 2004, his writing career headed west. Garamella loaded his silver Volvo and drove to Aspen, Colo., where he didn't know a soul. It didn't take him long to make friends in the scenic resort town. When he wasn't writing or reading, he enjoyed skiing and hiking. To support his lifestyle he worked at the oldest hotel in Aspen, the Hotel Jerome, as a doorman and bellman. During that time he met Steve “Monk” Williams, a former national team skier and coach who has multiple sclerosis. Garamella wrote a book about Williams, which he recently self-published as The Monk . He says Williams is the most positive person he has ever met.

Garamella brought the inspiration he learned from Williams and many others in his travels to his current residence in the heart of Chicago. Often on the move, Garamella has traveled worldwide to countries such as Austria, Egypt, England, Italy, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico and Sweden . Through his travels his interests have broadened as a writer. The living writer he most aspires to emulate his career after is David Halberstam. Garamella says, however, each writer must create his own blueprint, find his own pantheon. He is currently busy at his desk working on his first novel.