Horace Jeffery Hodges was born in the Arkansas Ozarks, earned a BA in English and American literature at Baylor University, and obtained a history master’s and doctorate at UC Berkeley. He has been a "Gypsy Scholar" who has taught in various places around the globe, but he now teaches at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, where he has settled down with his wife, Sun-Ae, and their two children. He has published articles, stories, poetry, and one novella as well as various translations from Korean with his wife, including Yi Kwang-Su’s epic novel The Soil.