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Max Hardberger is a professionally trained writer with a unique background. After he earned a B.A. degree in English from the University of New Orleans, Hardberger attended the world-renowned post-graduate Program in Creative Writing (known informally as the "Writers' Workshop") at the University of Iowa. He also attended the University's film school. In 1972 he received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction and Poetry and has since used his formal training to write on topics drawing inspiration from his wide array of life experiences. At various times in his life, Hardberger has worked as a ship captain, newspaper reporter, English teacher, crop duster, private investigator, maritime lawyer, flight instructor, ship surveyor, commercial aircraft pilot, sailing instructor, vessel repossession specialist, filmmaker, oilfield mud engineer and ship breaker.
His adventures have taken him throughout the world--from lawless ports in the Caribbean and the war-torn jungles of Central America to the once-forbidden city of Vladivostok--where he crossed paths with a veritable rogue's gallery of characters, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates, and Russian mobsters.
Hardberger drew upon his maritime experiences in writing his first book, Deadweight: Owning the Ocean Freighter (Palm Island Press, 1994), a textbook on ship ownership that Fairplay Magazine (Lloyd's of London Press) called "required reading" and "truth at last." He followed Deadweight with his first novel, Freighter Captain (Pioneer Press, 1998), a semi-autobiographical account of his adventures as a ship captain in the Caribbean. Hardberger then moved from maritime subjects to a murder mystery with his 1999 novel, The Jumping-Off Place (Great Circle Press), which one reviewer described as "a tribute to the classics and a great hard-boiled novel in its own right." His third novel, The Sea Bitch, tells the story of a young man who leaves the turmoil of the Sixties to sail the Caribbean in a small, unseaworthy boat.
Hardberger was recently engaged by the Broadway Books imprint of Random House to write a book about his adventures in repossessing ships in lawless ports. With a working title of The Good Pirate, the hardback version of the book is scheduled for release in the summer of 2009. The subject matter of this book is currently being developed into a feature film by Frank Marshall of 'The Kennedy/Marshall Company', and was also the subject of an episode of Repo Men: Stealing for a Living (2001), which aired in 2004 on The Learning Channel.
As a student of military nonfiction, particularly of World War II, Max was asked to write the introduction to the English-language edition of Vassili Zaitsev's Notes of a Sniper (on which the movie Enemy at the Gates was based). Max has also written hundreds of articles for various maritime publications, including WorkBoat Magazine, National Fisherman, Marine Money, Maritime Reporter, and The Maritime Security Handbook. He has written several screenplays, including The Kimbrel-West Clan, the true story of the nation's most successful outlaw gang, Red Clay, a hard-boiled detective movie set in rural Mississippi, and The Ice Man's Daughter, a caper-and-chase actioner.
As a devotee of the hardboiled school of fiction, Max's writing style offers gritty realism. Like his life, many of Max's books and screenplays are set in the seedy world of international business. His protagonists are often like himself, savvy, sardonic, and capable of violent action. And his villains are drawn from the panoply of miscreants he's met as a ship captain and maritime lawyer. His stories are fact-based, real-world adventures from the underbelly of world commerce, and they are the stuff of legend.
His upcoming memoir by the Broadway Books imprint of Random House entitled, Seized! Battling Pirates and Recovering Stolen Ships in the Worlds Most Troubled Waters, will be available on April 6, 2010.
