Don De Grazia, 'American Skin' author, Columbia College Chicago teacher, dead at 56

It was the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Don De Grazia was living at a YMCA, taking creative writing classes at Columbia College Chicago, working as a bouncer at Metro and writing a novel.

At Metro, he was adept at watching the churning dance floor for any metalheads and punks who might be thinking about jumping on stage because he'd been one of them himself as a teenager.

Starting when he was 16, he and a group of friends would drive in from the northwest suburbs to the North Side club to see punk bands like Naked Raygun, Dead Kennedys and FEAR.

Mr. De Grazia, who died June 13 at 56 after a medical problem he suffered during a 16-inch softball game, was a keen observer of and became friends with people from the various groups and factions represented at hardcore punks shows. Among them: skinheads, a group whose beliefs ranged from simply anti-establishment to racist.

Mr. De Grazia mined the experiences for material to write his first novel — "American Skin" — in which he details the odyssey of a young runaway who ends up in Chicago and joins a multiracial group of anti-Nazi skinheads.

At 28, after striking out with American publishers, he spent his last $75 to send a copy to Jonathan Cape, a London publisher known for publishing gritty fiction.

One day a few weeks later, Mr. De Grazia got an early morning call from a giddy woman with an English accent who had good news: His book would be published.

It hit European bookshelves in 1998 and was met with acclaim. It was published in the United States in 2000.

A reviewer in the Washington Post wrote: "'American Skin' is for those who read to encounter craftsmanship and feats of imagination."

Donald G. Evans, founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, called it a “masterpiece.”

The book paved the way for a full-time teaching job at Columbia, where Mr. De Grazia was a mentor to young writers trying to find their voices.

Toya Wolfe was one of them. She mined her life growing up in housing projects on the South Side to write "Last Summer on State Street," which won the Newberry Library's $25,000 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award last year.

"He was a champion of me and my work," Wolfe said in a message relayed by Mr. De Grazia's longtime friend and publicist Sheryl Johnston. "Took me from a baby writer to a professional."

Born, Jan. 3, 1968, Mr. De Grazia grew up in the suburbs in a working-class home in a wooded area of Wadsworth and attended Warren Township High School in Gurnee. Before class, he'd sit in the library and read newspapers and absorb the work of Mike Royko, his favorite columnist. He also wrestled and edited the school newspaper.

One story he wrote detailed the lives and interactions of the jocks, nerds and burnouts at school. It landed him in hot water with the school administrations and stirred the pot among the various social groups, according to Ian Vasquez, a longtime friend.

Mr. De Grazia also ran for student government president and won even though he didn’t believe in the organization, viewing it as frivolous and filled with self-important people.

"To prove his point, his campaign consisted of zero ideas," Vasquez said. "He merely plastered the high school with photocopies of a picture of him holding a gun to a cute dog’s head with the saying, 'Vote for me or the dog gets it.' Ironic because he loved dogs.

"The school made him take the posters down, but classmates thought it was hilarious and voted for him overwhelmingly. As president, he never went to any of the student government meetings. This was his way of making a point."

Mr. De Grazia dropped out of high school his senior year and ran away from home. He lived at a friend's house before joining the National Guard and going through four months of boot camp in Georgia.

"He wanted to be independent, which he achieved, but he always said he did admire and love his parents and his sister," Vasquez said.

Mr. De Grazia later got his high school equivalency diploma, took a job at a coffee shop in Evanston and shared an apartment with Vazquez and other friends who were attending Northwestern University. He became the unofficial leader of the group, which he dubbed the "Rogues Scholars."

"We felt we were well-read and well-spoken, intellectually adept and able to challenge each other, whether our views were left or right, and argue with facts and push the envelope a little bit on something we'd see as absurd but never in an offensive or hurtful way" Vazquez said.

Mr. De Grazia later carried that mentality into the classroom, pushing his students to challenge themselves.

He also became part of the city's literary landscape and helped organize Columbia's "Story Week," a yearly gathering of celebrated authors that lasted until a few years ago.

In the early 2000s, Mr. De Grazia suggested inviting Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author of "Train Spotting." Welsh agreed. They met at the event in 2002 and became friends.

"We were kind of inseparable buddies, really," Welsh said. "He was my best friend and inducted me into every aspect of the city. We both have this sort of working-class, blue-collar ethos, and we both liked writing and culture that came from that place."

Welsh lived in Chicago for about seven years, beginning in 2009, and had a place around the corner from Mr. De Grazia's North Side apartment.

"He was one of these people you've had yourself some adventures with and who kind of changed your life and made you actually think of and look at life in a very different way," Welsh said.

The two once took in a Cubs and White Sox game in the same day and "got into all sorts of scrapes" that Mr. De Grazia, who could hold his liquor and hold his own in a fight, got them out of, Welsh said.

The pair co-wrote "The Creatives," a play that won "Best Musical" at Edinburgh's Fringe Fest.

"He liked writing but didn't really like having to go out and sell books," Welsh said. "He much preferred teaching. He touched so many people's lives and inspired so many people through his teaching."

Social media posts on his death, drew dozens of comments from former students.

"Dude was always my favorite and kept encouraging me to keep writing and working on my craft," one former student wrote.

"He was a force in my view at Columbia and in the literary community of the city," said Randy Albers, former chair of Columbia's fiction writing department, who remembers teaching Mr. De Grazia at Columbia. "He was very skeptical when he came in to my class. But, when he realized we were focusing on what was working and not critiquing the hell out of stuff, he gave himself over to it, and things took off. It was a turning point for him.

"And if you met him and hit it off, you hit it off for life with him. His death is a huge loss for Columbia Chicago and all whose lives he touched."

Mr. De Grazia was married to Siera Cerny, a writer, actress and comic improviser. The couple had a 17-month old daughter, Daisy.

Mr. De Grazia died shortly after he began feeling fatigued during a championship softball championship game at Hamlin Park.

He was the manager and pitcher of a coed team whose mascot, named Li’l Stucky, was based on the rodent that left the famed rat hole imprint on a Roscoe Village sidewalk, not far from where Mr. De Grazia lived.

"Being a father and husband was everything to him," said Lisa Jackson, his sister. "I've never seen him so happy — the love he had for Daisy and Siera, the pride he had. Being a father changed him. It was a beautiful part of his life."

Services have been held.