More About Me

Joseph Bingham grew up near an irrigation ditch full of frogs and snakes. He began catching and studying them at a young age. An old cabinet in his basement study was filled with cigar boxes that housed his pinned insect collection. That’s also where he kept a cheap microscope with which he studied protozoa—one-celled animals that he grew in bottles full of stinky pond water. The top of his desk was decorated with an empty peanut butter jar that held his pet black widow spider. He fed the spider on hornets, which regularly found their way into the makeshift study through a gap in the window.

Joseph’s reading included any book he could find on nature, especially reptiles, amphibians, insects, and dinosaurs. As a young teenager, he read White Waters and Black, the story of a scientific team who explored the Amazon basin in the early 1920s, and he fell in love with South America. He lived in Brazil for several years and speaks Portuguese. In his medical practice as a family physician in Sioux City, Iowa, he organized a program to help with prenatal care and do all the baby deliveries for the Winnebago and Omaha Indian Reservations, which were just over the border in Nebraska. He was later able to get additional training in tropical medicine. He went on five different medical trips to the Amazon and to Ethiopia. Blue Dragonfly gave him the opportunity to use all of his interests within the story of Pedí and Adací.

Joseph began his writing journey ten years ago after retirement, and lives now with his wife on the central coast of California. There, in his own yard, he is able to find fence lizards, striped racer snakes, and many insect friends. He shares his stories and love for nature with his three sons and his grandchildren.