Gene (E. C.) Ayres

An award winning novelist, journalist, columnist, film and television writer and producer, Gene (E. C.) Ayres grew up in New Jersey, but spent much of his adult life working in California, and later in Florida, until taking a life-changing 30-month assignment in China in 2004 (see A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China 2009). He is a graduate (B.A.) of Syracuse University, worked in New York for seven years producing short films for Children's Television Workshop ("Sesame Street,") ABC, and Time Life Television, then went on to write and produce for various other PBS television series at stations in Maryland, Arizona, and California.
Moving to Los Angeles in the late '70s, Ayres began writing for commercial television, worked as co-producer and feature development writer at Universal Pictures, and was recipient of a Warner Brothers Writers Fellowship in 1982. Since leaving Hollywood in 1989 he has published five mystery novels, including winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel competition in 1992. He was a single parent for more than a decade prior to his nearly three years living and working in China as a freelance editor, writer, and university lecturer in English at Harbin University of Commerce, in northern Manchuria. He is married to a Chinese national, and now lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter. He can be reached at: ayresgene@gmail.com. His blog and website are at: www.geneayres.org