Christian Bauman was born on June 15, 1970. He is an American novelist and musician. He currently lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Early life and education

Bauman was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on June 15, 1970. He started grade school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and moved to the Quakertown section of Franklin Township, New Jersey, when he was in the fourth grade. At age 17, he left home. Bauman’s family traveled a lot in North America and Europe when he was a child. The family lived in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka for a year from 1983 to 1984. At that time, Bauman was in 8th grade. Bauman was raised by his stepfather, a philosophy professor, and his mother, a physician. His biological father was not always around and spent a year in prison when Bauman was a child. In a 2003 interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Bauman said his childhood was not very happy. He graduated from North Hunterdon High School in Clinton Township, New Jersey, in 1988, and did not attend college.

Career

In 1991, when he was 21 years old, Baumain joined the U.S. Army and served for four years. He was part of a special unit called Army Waterborne and was sent to Somalia from 1992 to 1993. In 1994, he was sent to Haiti on a ship called LSV-1. In both missions, Baumain was among the first American soldiers to arrive, joining the Somalia mission in its early weeks and arriving in Haiti within the first hour of the mission.

During the 1990s, Baumain wrote songs and short stories. Some of his songs, including "Kismaayo," were written in Mogadishu, Somalia, and sent back to Jack Hardy, who later performed the song at a venue called The Bottom Line. These songs are now part of the Smithsonian's Folkways Collection, which includes recordings from New York's Fast Folk. None of his short stories from this time have been published.

After leaving the Army in 1995, Baumain spent the next few years writing and playing guitar on the North American folk music scene. He performed alone and as part of a group called Camp Hoboken, which included musicians Gregg Cagno and Linda Sharar. He opened shows for well-known artists like Pete Seeger, Jack Hardy, John Gorka, Odetta, Cheryl Wheeler, and Livingston Taylor at venues such as Godfrey Daniels, Passim, Eddie's Attic, and The Iron Horse.

In 2002, Baumain published his first novel, The Ice Beneath You, which tells the story of a young American soldier returning from Somalia. Some parts of the book were written in Somalia during his deployment, but most of it was written between 1999 and 2000. The book was bought by Simon & Schuster in 2001 and published in 2002. In a book called What Every Person Should Know About War, author Chris Hedges called The Ice Beneath You "one of the finest books about life in the American army."

In 2005, Robert Stone, a writer who won the National Book Award, praised Baumain's novel Voodoo Lounge, which was published in 2005 and tells the story of a female soldier with HIV during the 1994 occupation of Haiti. Stone wrote, "The prose in Voodoo Lounge reverberates in the white space around it." Baumain's first two novels are among the few war-themed books written by a Generation X author.

His third novel, In Hoboken, published in 2008, focuses on a group of young musicians in the mid-1990s and the mental health facility where one of them works. A critic named Paul Constant wrote, "Bauman is an incredible writer. This is one of those books—like Lethem when he's cooking, or Chabon at his most vibrant—when every line snaps and propels you forward."

Between 2003 and 2006, Baumain wrote short essays that were regularly featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Most of his commentaries were based on his four years in the Army. He also wrote about his life as a writer, his daughters, and his time as a touring musician.

Baumain is currently the creative director of an advertising agency in New York City. He regularly updates his personal blog, sharing updates about his progress on two new novels.