Tad Crawford is an author, publisher, and attorney. His most recent work is On Wine-Dark Seas: A Novel of Odysseus and His Fatherless Son Telemachus, which was recently published by Arcade. In exploring what might have happened after The Odyssey, Crawford celebrates the ongoing power of mythmaking and creates a powerful exploration of the relationship between fathers and sons.
It was a dream about his own father that first inspired Crawford to write this novel. “In the dream my father was a wounded Greek youth,” he explains. “He had been wounded in the ankle and I picked him up and carried him down into a necropolis, a city of the dead, and as I carried him farther and farther, he became lighter and lighter. That dream led to research going back to The Iliad, The Odyssey, other epics lost in antiquity that formed The Trojan Cycle of eight poems, and many other Greek myths that give life to this novel of Odysseus as the archetypal absent father who struggles in seeking a bond with his adult son.”
Crawford is also the author of a previous novel, A Floating Life, about a man going through his midlife crisis (and a divorce) who finds a mentor to help guide him. Kirkus described the novel as “odd, offbeat and strangely shimmering,” Booklist praised its “elements of the picaresque and magic realism, blended with quirky, surreal humor,” and The New York Journal of Books stated that “his refreshing style brings surprise and fun back into fiction.”
Crawford’s love of mythology and folktales also led to a depth exploration of the psychology of money in a nonfiction book titled The Secret Life of Money. Publishers Weekly opined, “the book should enlighten those who tend to view money only in the most literal terms.”
Crawford grew up in the artist’s colony of Woodstock, New York, graduated from Columbia Law School, served as General Counsel for the Graphic Artists Guild, and played an active role in advocating for artists' rights. He has written extensively on the legal aspects of creative work, including Legal Guide for the Visual Artist (now in its 6th edition and co-authored by MJ Bogatin). In 1989 he founded Allworth Press, which has become a leading publisher of books on business for creative fields. The company (now an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing) has published over 400 books on topics such as fine art, graphic design, photography, writing, theater, and entrepreneurship.
