Chris Lester
Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Chris earned his Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, graduating summa cum laude in December 2000. He came to California in 2001 and was instantly ruined for anywhere else. He attended graduate school at the University of California-Santa Cruz from 2001 to 2004, earning a master's degree in biology; his thesis research on elephant seals was published in 2005 by the Journal of Experimental Biology (London). Life events and an unfortunate downturn in the availability of scientific funding required him to return to Michigan in late 2004, where he worked for four years in the stable but singularly uninteresting field of title insurance. He returned to California in 2008 to accept a teaching internship with ARISE, and this time he vows to stay until they drag him away kicking and screaming. He currently lives in Berkeley, which he has pronounced to be the closest thing to Santa Cruz on this side of the mountains. In his free time he enjoys playing guitar, reading and dancing, and is hard at work on his first novel.
