Ken Varnold

Ken Varnold:
Ken is a writer based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where he has resided for nearly fifty years. His life’s work has included social services, law enforcement, actor, playwright, and investigator, both for the U.S. government, and one of America’s largest casinos. His writing credits include the stage play, starke.florida, which debuted in Minneapolis in 1996, and has since been performed in the UK. Starke.florida is a play based on the last week in the life of serial killer Ted Bundy.
His first novel, The List of Things Bought, is the biography of a woman stolen from her family in China when she was six years old, and follows her life until she died in America in 2000 at the age of eighty years.
His second novel, Somewhere Down the River, is a memoir; a nostalgic look back at 1950’s America, as well as a glimpse into the life of a middle-class, mid-western family with all its humor and pathos.
Ken’s latest novel, Urumqi, is a work of fiction that explores the question of what would happen if everyone today, in our world of instant information, learned of a real doomsday that imperils all of us together; a doomsday that favors no one by gender or race, age or income.
With three more novels in various stages of development, as well as a screenplay, Ken is willing to go where many people don’t often like to, in an effort to uncover the roots of our human nature. Every good story is a balancing act of character, plot, theme, and entertainment, and these are the qualities he attempts to bring to all of his writing.