Brian James Patrick Doyle was born in New York on November 6, 1956. He received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Notre Dame 1978. He worked for several magazines including U.S. Catholic, Boston College Magazine, and Portland Magazine, which he was editor of from 1991 until his death. His books included Mink River, Martin Marten, Bin Laden's Bald Spot, Children and Other Wild Animals, Prayer for Cashiers and Checkout-Counter Folks, and The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson. He died Saturday from complications related to a brain tumor on May 27, 2017 at the age of 60.