Author, playwright, actor, director, critic, artist

William J. Burghardt is the author of Walking Backward in My Father’s Footsteps, the story of his father’s WWII military career and why after being told he was going overseas, he was offered to go anywhere in the US for the duration of the war. Burghardt’s first book, When Mongrel Dogs Teach is a hilarious and controversial look at our educational system, an emotional quagmire experienced when Burghardt started teaching high school at age forty-five.

He’s written two produced plays, “Just Before the Snow Melts” and “Shadow Stock,” and holds a BA in rhetoric from the University of Illinois, and a master’s in theater from Roosevelt University. As a theater critic, he won the Peter Lisagor Award for Outstanding Journalism Achievement and has acted in and/or directed over forty plays.