Jack McDevitt is a Philadelphia native. He is a graduate of LaSalle and holds a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan University.

He has been a naval officer, an English teacher, a motivational trainer, and a customs officer. During his teaching years, McDevitt directed high school,theater groups, appearing (like Hitchcock) in cameos. He was a native in South Pacific, a Nazi bodyguard in The Sound of Music, but his proudest moment came playing the corpse in Arsenic and Old Lace.

McDevitt wrote his first science fiction story in 1980 at the suggestion of his wife Maureen, as an antidote to the routine of training customs inspectors. The story, titled "The Emerson Effect," sold to The Twilight Zone Magazine and was published in the December 1981 issue.

He is married to the former Maureen McAdams of Philadelphia. McDevitt and his family live in Brunswick, Georgia.

Biography provided by the author, June 2002.