C. E. Poverman has traveled extensively and has worked many jobs—bartender, dynamiter, housepainter, family counselor, and others. He was born in New Haven and received a B.A. degree with honors from Yale in 1966. He taught in Ahmedabad, India, at St. Xavier College, on a Fulbright. He then taught briefly at Thammasat College in Bangkok. Poverman received an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa (1969). He taught at the University of Hawaii in 1969–70, then stayed in Honolulu to write and do assorted jobs. He began teaching fiction writing at Yale in 1973. His stories have appeared in the Iowa Review, Playboy, and Fiction International. He just completed a full-length fiction manuscript.