[1] Barrax served as a Professor of English and creative writing at North Carolina State University.
Barrax spent his early years in the rural South before moving with his family to Pittsburgh in 1944.
[2] After graduating in 1951 Barrax went to work for one year at the U.S. Steel Company in Homestead to fund his college education.
He then joined the Air Force in order to get the GI Bill to finance the rest of his higher education.
[5] Barrax was struck and killed by the driver of a vehicle on December 7, 2019, in southeast Raleigh, North Carolina.