PELKA, Fred 1954-

PERSONAL: Born October 16, 1954, in Patchogue, NY; son of Friedrich (a grocery store clerk) and Hilda (a homemaker) Pelka. Ethnicity: "German-American." Education: State University of New York—Buffalo, B.A.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o 54 Burncolt Rd., Florence, MA 01062-1054; fax 413-586-1852.

CAREER: Hospital News, Boston, MA, reporter specializing in health care, health insurance, and finance, 1986-87; freelance writer. Boston Center for Independent Living, Boston, MA, cofounder and vice chairperson of transportation committee, 1984-86, member of board of trustees, 1990-93; Bancroft Library Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley, researcher and interviewer, Project on Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement, beginning 2000.

MEMBER: American Association of People with Disabilities, Society for Disability Studies, Justice for All.

AWARDS, HONORS: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellow, 2004.

WRITINGS:

The ABC-CLIO Companion to the Disability Rights Movement, American Bibliographical Center-CLIO Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1997.

The Civil War Letters of Colonel Charles F. Johnson, Invalid Corps, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2004.

Work represented in anthologies, including SirS Researcher, SirS, 1998; The LRS Reader, Library Reference Service-Verticomp, 1998; and The Prose Reader, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1999. Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including Mainstream, Americana, America's Civil War, Changing Men, Humanist, Nature and Health, Rural New England, Mouth, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and Threepenny Review. Contributing editor, On the Issues, 1991-98; member of review board for Review of Disability Studies.

WORK IN PROGRESS: An essay on disability rights for Social Issues: An Encyclopedia of Controversies, History, and Debates.