Gerald William Haslam (March 18, 1937 – April 13, 2021)[1] was an author focused on rural and small towns in California's Great Central Valley including its poor and working-class people of all colors.
[2] The son of an oil worker, he grew up in nearby Oildale where Merle Haggard was a neighbor.
[citation needed] Haslam was a professor of English at Sonoma State University (SSU) from 1967 to 1997.
After becoming a professor emeritus, he occasionally taught for the Oscher Lifelong Learning program (Sonoma State University).
He taught part time at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco from 2001 to 2015.
[3] Concurrent with his teaching at SSU, Haslam published numerous articles and stories in national and regional magazines.