Born in Los Angeles, G.W. Kroeker is the son of an Oklahoma sharecropper, and grandson of a German Mennonite immigrant who homesteaded 640 Acres in the Great Oklahoma Land-rush.  He has lived in California, Oregon, Kentucky, and since 2000, in Aachen, Germany.

Growing up on a farm in rural Chino, California, surrounded by orange groves and his father's eight acres of walnut trees, he lived a life of freedom in the outdoors.  When he was young, he enjoyed trips to his Grandmother’s farm in Oklahoma and to aunts and uncles who lived in the green, rolling hills of Arkansas, and he has never lost his love of the country. 

As a high school student he excelled in athletics, but had little interest in academics.  During his three years in the 101st Airborne Division stationed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, however, he became an avid reader; and after his discharge he returned to college where he studied literature and history, eventually doing graduate work in creative writing at the University of Oregon. 

Since then, his poetry has won many prizes and has been widely published in America and abroad. His first collection of poems, Vernal Calibrations, was published in 1992 (now out of print) by Red Dancefloor Press, as was his second, A Darkness Defined, in 1994.  He is the author of a half dozen genre paperback novels, and has also published quality short fiction and the much acclaimed novella The Magi At Christmas (1997, Erica House Book Publishers, now out of print).  In 2003 he signed a contract for the film option rights for Magi, which were renewed in 2005. 

He has taught both high school and college English and Creative Writing, and for almost twenty years served as a poetry consultant for the Advanced Placement Program of the College Board.  In 1998, while doing background for a novel set in southern Germany, he met the teacher and folklorist Monika Hasse.  After an inter-continental romance, they were married in Aachen, Germany, in the spring of 2000, and that summer Kroeker moved there as a permanent resident. 

For the next five years they traveled widely in Germany, Europe and the United States, but unfortunately, their travels were interrupted often for treatments for his wife’s recurring cancer. Their loving relationship became a powerful influence on both his poetry and fiction. After a long stay in hospital, she died of metastatic breast cancer in July of 2005.  Even though Kroeker still resides in Germany, his adopted homeland, he travels often to the US to visit friends and family.

G.W. Kroeker has been writing professionally for much of his adult life.  While still a trooper in the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, he wrote his first novel.  “A wretched piece of romantic drivel,” he now confesses, “but at least I sat down and wrote it.  Since most people just talk about writing a novel, at twenty-one, I figured I was already ahead of the game.”  His first piece of fiction was published a year later, a short-short story in the Sunday supplement of the Pomona Progress Bulletin. 

During his early college years, thanks to a Professor of  Modern Poetry, Irene Embler, he fell under the spell of poetry, and began writing his own, and to publish, even winning several prizes.  After graduation from Pasadena College, he attended the graduate program of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, and later taught both high school and college creative writing.

During the late 70's and early 80's, Kroeker published a half dozen genre novels, and did other writing that he refers to as “hack work,” but in 1989, during a long lunch at the summer home of the Swiss painter Werner Liechti on Lake Morat, the artist shared with Kroeker his own struggles with subject matter.  He had always loved to paint what collectors didn’t want to buy, circuses, clowns and harlequins, while they only wanted his landscapes.  This lunch turned Kroeker’s writing life around, and upon his return to America, he began writing what he felt most passionate about, poetry and serious short fiction .

Since that momentous lunch, his poetry has won many prizes and has appeared in a wide variety of publications in America and abroad, Sou’wester, Zone 3, Gulf Stream, Pearl, The Cape Rock, Parting Gifts, Black Bear Review, Bird Watchers Digest, Inkshed (England), Hudson Valley Review, Green Fuse, and Cider Press Review, to name but a few.  Beyond the publication of two volumes of poetry, he has read his work and given workshops across the US, and has been a Writer in Residence at a number of conferences. 

Two of Kroeker’s favorite short stories from this productive period were published in Robert Ward’s Bellowing Ark.  “Crane, Chekhov and Elizabeth Pugh” appeared in the July/August, 1995 Issue, a long story that also serves as the framework for his new novel The Badenweiler Waltz.  “Van Gogh in California” followed in the March/April, 1998 Issue.  Tucked in between was the publication of his short novel The Magi at Christmas in 1997. 

Unfortunately its release came clouded by unsolicited media attention when the book was pulled from the shelves of the high school library by the school principal where Kroeker taught at the time for being inappropriate for high school students.  The brouhaha may have made his publisher happy, but Kroeker himself was disturbed and disappointed by what he felt was the wrong kind of media attention.  In interviews on NBC and ABC local news, in The Los Angeles Times and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and a variety of other local news papers, he felt forced to defend the novel and himself. He was even the focus of a lengthy Cable I TV program on “Censorship and Literature.”  What was especially satisfying for him, though, was the flood of reader responses to the situation, supporting not only him, but the novel as one of the most moving they had ever read.  Then, on an even brighter note, the film option rights for Magi were purchased in 2003, and renewed in 2005.    

In the fall of 2003, he began work on a new novel, The Badenweiler Waltz, which was very much a collaboration with his wife, the late Monika Hasse-Kroeker, the last draft of which she actually read and commented on while in hospital.  After her death in July of 2005, he gave the manuscript a throrough re-write, in the light of her loss and the grieving that has followed. While that work was on-going, he continued to write poetry, which seemed to offer him a unique way to deal with the feelings and emotions, and which he is sure helped him deal with the process of greaving and healing.  In January of 2007, The Monika Poems was published by the Marchland Press in Aachen, Germany. It is a small collection of poems that are not only a tribute to his wife, but are as well a testament of the transforming power of love that can turn grief and suffering into art.

In the fall of 2007, his new novel was published by BookSurge, owned by Amazon.com.  It was a risk to self-publish, but Kroeker wanted complete control over this special novel, from editing and formating to cover art and text.  And he has been satisfied with the result, realizing that the novel's success will come about through reader response rather than high-powered promotion and advertising.  Reviews of The Badenweiler Waltz have been overwhelmingly positive by both critics and readers alike, which has been very gratifying.  (For more on The Badenweiler Waltz, see the Fiction Page on this site.)

Kroeker is currently at work on a memoir (working title, Beyond the Limits of Love) of his meeting with Monika Hasse in 1998, on the Ammersee, the love that grew from that chance encounter on a train, through their years and travels together, and, of course, the difficult and painful struggle with her disease and death.  He confesses that he finds it much more difficult to write biography than create fiction, which, he supposes, is as it should be.  Of course, he continues to write poetry as well, and has even returned to the novel he was doing background for back in 1998, when he and his wife met, and which he promised her that he would one day finish.

And, for those who have read The Badenweiler Waltz, yes, he is still dancing!