Mark Fullmer grew up in mostly sunny Southern California and spent a carefree youth singing hippie-inspired church music and drawing pictures on the recycled dot matrix paper his pop brought home from the office.
The former led him to discover he loved music. The latter led his mother to discover, when her son kept drawing pictures of people with greenish-yellow flesh, that Mark was colorblind. Thus Mark bid farewell to a career as a painter and began playing trumpet.He studied with David Washburn, principal trumpet of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, then received a scholarship to the University of Southern California and continued music studies there with Boyd Hood of the L.A. Philharmonic. After receiving his degree he moved to Oxford, England where he worked blue color, read a lot, wrote a little, and snuck into Oxford University classes. Dot dot dot.
Upon repatriation, Mark spent 2 years working as a math tutor, construction worker, office manager, and night watchman. He then studied English Literature at Boston College. While there, he created the literary journal New Comm Ave and co-founded an independent film company, Olive Barrel Productions.
Post grad school, Mark taught college writing and spent his free time writing, making artsy fartsy t-shirt art, and recording melancholy music.
Then the zugunruhe hit and Mark wandered the U.S., living in Taos, New Orleans and Brooklyn and completed his first novel, 1337 (2010, A Mutual Respect Books & Music).
From 2010-2012, Mark is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. He lives in Tacloban City where he works at the Eastern Visayas State University. He has initiated a number of projects to improve education in the area. Find out how you can help.