Marc Acito is a would-be actor who ended up a writer.

For those who do not know me, I'm very famous. My debut novel, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater, won the Oregon Book Awards' Ken Kesey Award for the Novel, although I sometimes leave out the Oregon part to make it sound more important. It was also selected as a Top Ten Teen Pick by the American Library Association, though it still has not achieved my ultimate goal of being banned by irate fundamentalists. The New York Times chose College as an Editors Choice, it's been optioned for film by Columbia Pictures and is translated into five languages I can't read.

I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, on January 11, 1966, attended by Three Wise Guys. The couple who raised me deny it, but I suspect I might be the secret love child of Liza Minnelli and Peter Allen, which explains my effervescent personality and fondness for prescription medication.

I grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, the small-town star of high school and summer camp musicals. Y'know, the guy who wore Capezio dance shoes and leg warmers to school. In my defense, it was the 1980s.

FUN FACT #6: I have had 36 jobs in my life, and almost as many hair-dos. Neither the jobs nor the hair-dos worked out very well.  I began my writing career with my syndicated humor column, The Gospel According to Marc, which earned me poverty wages at nineteen alternative newspapers nationwide, as well as the sobriquet "the gay Dave Barry."

FUN FACT #7: When I met Dave Barry, he looked me in the eye and said, "Let's just get one thing clear: I'm the gay Dave Barry." I still freelance, most notably as a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Live Wire Radio. I live mostly in my head, but my body resides in Portland, Oregon, which is a good place to write because there are lots of strange people and it rains all the time.

I've just co-written a play with Cynthia Whitcomb. It's called Holidazed. It's about a suburban soccer mom whose life gets turned upside down when she takes in a pagan street kid. And I'm hard at work on the third in the Theater Peopleseries, tentatively called, The Jazz Hands of God.

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/211-Marc-Acito

http://www.marcacito.com/