Ray St. Louis – Biography
I was born in 1949, which makes me a baby boomer and a product of the sixties and
seventies. I dropped out of college in 1970 when the student body of my school, the
University of Minnesota, went on strike along with numerous other colleges and
universities across the nation to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the killings at
Kent State. Rather than go back to classes when the strike ended, I became a full time
anti-war and anti-draft activist. My path then took me to political theater, and later to
masks and sculpture. I worked with a couple of theater companies in Minneapolis
during these years - acting, directing, writing scripts, and building masks. In 1977, I
started performing at Renaissance theme fairs as a puppeteer and stilt walker. Over the
next several years my performing troupes and I worked the Renaissance festival circuit,
performing at fairs all over the eastern half of the United States. One of those troupes,
the Sticks and Stones Stilt Dancers, later became the model for the Stone Soup
Performing Company featured in my novel, The Road Dog Diary. More on that
below. In 1984 I built a dragon swing, which I started operating as a man-powered ride
at these fairs. Over the next few years the ride business grew as the performing aspect
of my festival involvement waned. By the start of the nineties, it was all rides. My
business, Flying Dragon Attractions, now operates at seven festivals in five states. We
specialize in human and gravity powered rides: swings, slides, and carousels.
Since 1994 I have been a columnist specializing in political and social commentary for
the High Springs Herald and other Florida newspapers. I have won a number of state
journalism awards in both the serious and humorous column categories (I like to call
myself a “sometimes humorous” newspaper columnist). The Road Dog Diary is my
first work of fiction. The characters and events of the story draw heavily on my
experiences from three decades of participation on the Renaissance festival circuit. I
believe I’ve written the first insider’s account of life within the world of the Rennies, as
the subculture of itinerant Renaissance festival participants call themselves. I am
currently at work on the second novel, Skanktown Days, of what will eventually be a
trilogy. My columns continue to appear irregularly in the High Springs Herald.