Information taken from www.craiglancaster.net

From a young age, Craig Lancaster’s eyes took in two distinct, yet overlapping worlds. Lancaster was born in Lakewood, Wash., on Feb. 9, 1970, and during his youth, he spent the school years living in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, with his mother and stepfather.

In the summers, he would visit his father, an itinerant worker who moved around throughout the American West. Those years taught Lancaster how to make connections with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, a grounding in human nature and commonality that serves him well in life and in work. Landcaster’s stepfather, a longtime sportswriter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, played a big part in his gravitation toward journalism, and he has been an editor and writer for more than two decades.

In those summers with his father, Lancaster saw from an early age the struggles of those who live hand to mouth.

Those two worlds - suburban and rural, and all the ways in which they diverge and collide - inform his writing and his world view.

These days, Lancaster lives in Billings, with his wife, Angela, and their two incorrigible dachshunds, Bodie and Zula.

Lancaster tells about his time spent in the area: “I spent the summer of 1982 (I was 12) in Sidney, living in the Park Plaza Motel, while my father drilled test holes nearby. I’ve always had an affinity for Sidney, even though I grew up elsewhere.

I married a Fairview girl, Angela Buckley. One of the stories in “Past-Due Pastorals” is about Fairview and the oddity of meeting someone from that little dot on the map after having spent time there two decades earlier.”