William L. (Bill) Randall is a retired Professor of Gerontology at St. Thomas University (STU) on Canada's Atlantic coast. Brought up in rural New Brunswick, he holds an A.B. from Harvard College, a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and M.Div. and Ed.D. degrees from the University of Toronto. After a ten-year career as a protestant minister with the United Church of Canada (1979-1989), he taught English and Adult Education for four years at Seneca College in Toronto. In 1995, he began a 27 year career at STU where he taught a range of undergraduate courses in gerontology and helped to pioneer a unique approach to the study of aging known as narrative gerontology. Narrative gerontology blends insights from the humanities and social sciences to probe the complex dynamics of inner (or biographical) development in later life. Bill has given keynotes, papers, and workshops on this approach at conferences and universities in Canada, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain. Co-recipient of the 2009 Theoretical Developments in Social Gerontology Award from the Gerontological Society of America, Bill is founding co-editor of the Narrative Works journal, founding organizer of the Narrative Matters international conferences, and author or co-author of over 70 publications on narrative gerontology and related topics, including eight books. Among these are Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old and The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop, both published by Oxford University Press. To learn more about Bill or his publications, please visit www.williamlrandall.com. To learn more about his newest book, visit www.FairyTaleWisdom.com.
