Richard Doster

Georgia Connections

• Atlanta, Fulton County

Notes of Interest

Richard Doster is the editor of the prize-winning publication byFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America, and the author of two acclaimed novels, "Safe at Home" and "Crossing the Lines." He has lived and worked in Atlanta since 1989.

Richard Doster was born June 9, 1953, in Laurel, Mississippi. He grew up there and received his degree in advertising from the University of Florida in 1976. He spent his early career developing ad campaigns for Exxon Enterprises, the non-oil arm of the Exxon Corp. In the mid-1980 he moved to Orlanfo, Florida where he helped develop ad campaigns for banks, hospitals and restaurants, before coming to Atlanta in 1989, where his first ad campaign was in behalf of MARTA. A late-comer to Southern history, his books have focused on the 1950s and '60s when long-enforced racial segregation began ending across the region. His first novel, "Safe at Home" (2008), was set in the Deep South of the 1950s when an all-white minor league baseball team signed its first black player. In "Crossing the Lines" (2009), also set in the '50s, Doster used some of the characters from the first book. In this novel, a white newspaper reporter undertakes a personal journey of discovery about the truths and myths of tangled racial relationships. Author Robert Whitlow wrote that "Doster "reveals the extraordinary nobility of those willing to fight so all Americans can enjoy equality and justice." Doster lives and writes in Dunwoody.