Brad Henderson

BRAD HENDERSON earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and an MPW in fiction/poetry from University of Southern California (USC). He now teaches engineering and scientific writing full-time at University of California, Davis, (UC Davis) where he is a third-generation faculty. His father, Jerald M. Henderson, and paternal grandfather, S. Milton Henderson, were both engineering professors who wrote textbooks and specialized in agricultural equipment design. Brad's granddad Milton derived “The Henderson Equation,” a mathematical formula for calculating the drying time of harvested grains.

Brad’s “artist self”—creative writer + blues-rock drummer + high-desert drifter—draws upon his paternal, as well as and maternal roots. On his mother’s side, Brad’s great-great grandfather was California pioneer cattleman, Henry "Hartman" Hamel; his grandfather was the maverick, Ford Farm Efficiency Award winning rancher, Richard H. Hamel; and his grandmother, Marie Afton Hamel, was a storyteller and voracious connoisseur of American novels. Brad’s mother, Frances Hamel Henderson, played the snare drum. Brad has worked as a corporate engineer, education consultant, nightclub drummer, ranch hand, truck dock laborer, and maintenance technician.

His most recent publications are the dual chapbook of poetry co-authored with UC Davis colleague Andy Jones, Split Stock: Selected Poems (John Natsoulas Press 2006); the poetry chapbook, Speed, Horse-sweat, & Unboxed Sky by Beau Hamel, aka, Brad Henderson (Oak Meadows Press 2010); and the new 13th-Anniversary eBook Edition of Henderson’s Phi Kappa Phi award winning novel Drums, now available in all popular formats through Amazon/Kindle, SmashWords, and other outlets.

Brad was recently featured in the new eBook—Engineers Write! Thoughts on Writing from Contemporary Literary Engineers by Tom Moran (IEEE Press 2010)—as one of twelve “literary engineers” currently writing and publishing poetry and fiction in the United States. His full-length poetry manuscript, The Secret Cowboy: a Memoir in Verse, was recently named a semi-finalist for 2011 Miller Williams Poetry Book Prize at University of Arkansas Press. His individual poem, “Off Saba in the Caribbean,” won a Judges’ Commendation in Aesthetica magazine’s 2010 International Awards Series. Henderson is currently working on The Tick-tock Type-type Tortoise Man, a prose memoir about a frustrated writer’s ill-fated attempts to “make-it big” by the time he turns 50. He’s also working on a "form-, function-, and equation-based" grammar review booklet for left-brain-thinking techno-professionals.