George Polley was born in Santa Barbara, California and raised in Seattle, Washington. Early in 2008, he and his wife moved to Sapporo, Japan so that she could fulfill her dream of returning to the land of her birth.

His work has appeared in the South Dakota Review, Crow's Nest, Expanding Horizons, The Enchanted Self, Community Mental Health Journal, Maturing, The Lyon County (Minnesota) Review  Wine Rings, North Country Anvil, North American Mentor Magazine, the McLean County (Illinois) Poetry Review, River Bottom, Tower Talks, Foundations, GreenSpirit Journal, The View from Here, The Palestine Chronicle, A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories, and Speak Without Interruption.

He has also authored several booklets in the mental health field, two of them co-authored with Ana Dvoredsky, M.D. in 2007 and published by Tortoise and Hare Publications. Several are available from Amazon.com.

About himself, he has this to say: 

In all my living and all my studies I have asked this question; "What is it that makes living sing?" The answer, simply put, is compassion and gratitude; it is these that connect us to all that is. Leave them out and life begins very quickly to fall apart. As a writer of fiction and poetry these are foundational, though I must admit that they appeared first in my poetry. Then I wrote the story about an old man and a monkey and everything changed, not just for the old man and his wife, but for everyone in their tiny village, and for me. Then along came a grandfather and his big raven friend, and then Andy Lindquist and his big bear-like dog named Bear.

Now I'm working on a novel about Mexico City, discovering that compassion is valid even when one of the characters in the novel is a brutal Mexico City cop who dies when a freak storm washes him into a storm drain. Yet "in a small church in one of the neighborhoods that ring Mexico City, an  old woman lights a small white candle, which she places on the altar beneath the image of Mary and her son. Finished with her prayer, she gets to her feet and crosses herself, walks out of the church and goes home, where she lights a second, smaller white candle and places it in front of her grandson's Police Academy photograph. Then, sitting at her kitchen table, she pours herself a small cup of coffee and sings a lullaby in the nahuatl language of her people. her Pedrito, her baby has gone home to his rest., and she is happy.

"Xicochi, Xicochi, Conentzintle," she sings; "Go to sleep, go to sleep, little babe."

I think you'll like what you see here.

Be sure to drop on over to my Writers Blog and see what else I'm up to.George Polley Books:  https:www.facebook.com/gwp79

And here's my Amazon Author page:

To contact me personally, here is my email address: georgepolley@yahoo.com