Adam was born a few decades back in Los Angeles, CA, let’s not worry about the date. His family moved to the Netherlands when he was one, and to Saudi Arabia, when he was five. After a decade in Saudi, with a two-year sojourn in Houston in the middle, his family moved back to their homeland: Knoxville, TN, where his parents had met in the sixties. After attending middle and high school in Knoxville, Adam got into UNC-Chapel Hill, during the heyday of the Chapel Hill music scene (don’t do the math). He moved his high school band there, but nothing came of it, and he dropped out after freshman year to pursue music, soon joining the Matts, Long and McMichaels, in The Mayflies USA.
The Mayflies put out three albums on Yep Roc Records and toured substantially for several years, but never quite made it. Tired of sleeping on strangers’ couches, Adam opted to sleep on a friend’s couch in Los Angeles (the Third Matt, a high school friend). He got into screenwriting and wrote several award-winning scripts with his partner, Matt Dessem. Tiring also of that, he moved back to Carrboro in 2006.
From 2005-2008, he was a professional poker player (sounds interesting, is not). In 2008, he met his now-wife, who encouraged him to return to school. He fell in love with the Creative Writing program at UNC (where he now teaches), and pursued an MFA at Cornell University. While still at UNC, his undergraduate mentor Pam Durban submitted his work to Mid-American Review, which published his first story. His mentor at Cornell, Stephanie Vaughn, submitted his work to his now-agent Samantha Shea at the Georges Borchardt Agency.
Over the last fifteen years, Adam has published two award-winning novels, and a slew of short stories, many of them in his forthcoming collection from Autumn House Press: OBJECTS OF DESIRE.
(He also made a fourth album with the Mayflies USA in 2025, entitled KICKLESS KIDS.)
