Biography
Robert Blake Whitehill was born into a Quaker family in Mardela Springs, just outside Salisbury on Maryland's Eastern Shore peninsula. The family home lay next to the pond that powered a colonial-era relic, the Barren Creek Mill, near the birthplace of Frederick Douglass, and along Harriet Tubman's route for the Underground Railroad. He grew up sailing the Chesapeake Bay, and one of her most beautiful tributaries, the Chester River. After graduating from Westtown School, Whitehill stayed in Pennsylvania to earn his B.A. in creative writing at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges. Later he trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. As with David Mamet, exhaustive studies of the best English language drama for the stage and screen transformed an aspiring actor into a passionate writer. An early focus on feature screenwriting earned Whitehill film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival, and the Hamptons International Film Festival where he also received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship for his script, U.X.O. (Unexploded Ordnance). His feature script, Blue Rinse, co-written with Andrea Shane, was a Hudson Valley Film Festival Screenwriting Competition Winner, and a Finalist at the Telluride IndieFest. His feature script, Defiant, was a Semi-Finalist in the Black Screenplays Matter: An African American Screenwriting Competition (it was then entitled, Captain Smalls.) While writing many highly rated episodes of Discovery/Times Channel's The New Detectives, Daring Capers, and The Bureau, he served as the Vice President of Independent Film Acquisitions for the groundbreaking Centerseat.com, developing and managing their Independent Film Channel. He is also the author of the award-winning, critically acclaimed, international bestselling Ben Blackshaw series of thrillers. Whitehill lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. When not sailing, or knocking around the sky in a Cessna 152, Whitehill published several articles about his home waters in Chesapeake Bay Magazine. He is also the managing partner of Calaveras Media LLC, a feature film and television development company. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA, International Thriller Writers, GPA Aviation Club, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, and served for a number of years as an EMT-B with the Montclair Ambulance Unit.
