Lawrence J. Maushard has created a body of work with a focus on large issues as experienced by mostly working-class people of few means and limited resources.

His work has included stories about laid-off union workers in the Midwest, poor youth in Nicaragua, independence-minded residents in the former East bloc and desperate street peddlers in Cairo, to name a few.

But it’s not as if he’s been jetting in style around the globe in search of mystery and intrigue. Well, at least not the part about jetting round in style. Coach, always coach. That’s because Maushard has labored as an independent journalist since his last regular newspaper job in 1987 at the Daily Times in Pekin, Illinois. Since then, he’s subsidized his reporting by working variously as proofreader, warehouse clerk, public relations specialist, shipper & receiver, secretary, security guard, and bodega cashier, though not necessarily in that order.

The best thing that ever happened to this writer is the day he married Manizeh Karami in Chicago, 1995. Since then, he and his wife have lived a crazed version of the American dream constantly in flux and often out of control. Neither have any plans to change.

Born 1959 and raised in Peoria, Illinois, Maushard is the oldest sibling in a family of five brothers and two sisters. His father Tom is a proudly retired home and office lighting fixture salesman formerly at the family-run business still in operation after more than 100 years. His mother Nancy is a retired Registered Nurse and Assistant Teacher. At the moment, everyone is doing fine.

Maushard is a 1982 graduate of Illinois State University with a degree in English and minor in History. He graduated from Catholic elementary and high schools in Peoria, St. Philomena’s and the Academy of Our Lady/Spalding Institute.

Currently residing with his wife in Portland, Oregon, Maushard is extremely proud that his adopted city was the first municipality in the nation to refuse to allow its police to interview men of Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds as dictated by the US Attorney General. And he is very much ashamed of and appalled by the actions of the present illegitimate American President.

Video Stills by Miko Sandor.
Home page photos by Derek Szabo and LJM.