On April 1st, the Kansas Free Press will mark its 6-month anniversary. With gratitude for the Kansans who nobly commit their time and talents to citizen journalism, we are celebrating our upcoming half-year anniversary by proudly showcasing each of our writers.
HOBOKEN, N.J. - In this profile, we are honored to introduce KFP correspondent, David Cogswell. He says that he is a product of the middle of America in the middle of the 20th Century. David was born in Kansas to an English war bride and her D-Day veteran Navy lieutenant husband. He studied at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, pursuing courses in fine arts, art history, industrial design, English, American studies and mass communications.
Later, David got hung up in a social revolution and dropped out after three and a half years. He went on the road with a rock and roll band. "You can always go back to school," his musician friends told him. "But when will you be able to do this again?"
After all that, David did return to school to study creative writing at the New School in New York.
As a musician, he traveled widely throughout the heartland of the U.S. and Canada. He dug deeply into the fabric of American life in many diverse and unrecognized pockets of culture throughout the country. Knocking around the music industry, he played with, shared bills with and brushed shoulders with many of the great singers and musicians of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
David says that he has worked about a hundred jobs and has explored many layers of the working milieu, from dishwasher to draftsman, photographer, reporter, piano player, bartender, ditch digger, graveyard attendant, bookstore proprietor, speechwriter and file clerk.
As a writer, David has traveled the world from Antarctica to St. Petersburg to Cape Town and explored many lives and worlds.
We are thrilled to welcome David to the Kansas Free Press and we look forward to all of his news stories and opinion pieces.
He welcomes you to view his complete historical archives.
To learn more about any KFP writers, we encourage you to browse our directory of citizen journalists.
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