Larry A. Morris, Ph.D.

Larry lives with his lovely wife, an artist, in Tucson. He is a clinical and forensic psychologist who specializes in the evaluation and treatment of female and male victims and perpetrators of interpersonal violence. Over the past 30 years he has performed hundreds of forensic evaluations and testified as an expert witness in state, federal and military courts in cases of murder, rape, assault, domestic violence, child sexual abuse and anything else perpetrators, regardless of gender, do nasty to others. He also has served as director, consultant, or trainer on research, demonstration, and training projects funded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; National Institute of Mental Health; National Center for Child Advocacy; Office of Education; National Institute of Justice; Office for Victims of Crimes; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Always busy getting the word out about interpersonal violence as it relates to gender, trauma and childhood socialization, Larry has been an active participant in numerous keynote presentations, symposia, and workshops at state, national and international conferences. He is author or co-author of a wide range of professionally juried and published articles, reports, book chapters and books. He has also served on the editorial review board of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse and as a consulting editor for the American Psychological Association’s journal, Psychology of Men and Masculinity. In the early years of his career, Larry enjoyed teaching undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Arizona with an adjunct position in the Department of Psychology.

Larry feels honored to have received awards and recognition from the American Psychological Association and a variety of other professional organizations for outstanding contributions to the field of psychology. He also feels honored to have served as one of the founding members and first president of the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization (MaleSurvivor) and presidents of the Arizona Psychological Association and the Southern Arizona Psychological Association.

Throughout his career as a psychologist, Larry beat back the persistent urge to write the “great” psychological mystery/thriller broiling in the deep recesses of a brain trained to think only like an expert witness. No fiction. Only facts. Referenced facts. He knew he had to wait until the bulk of his professional work was done and his brain could finally be free to mix facts with creativity and just make-up stuff. When it was time to close the clinical and courtroom doors for good, Larry fired up his computer and went to work on his first novel. But knowing next to nothing about writing fiction, he soon learned his brain was not really free. Not yet. He had a lot to learn and even more to unlearn about writing so he got busy absorbing everything he could find about this pesky fiction writing business then got back to his first novel, then his second and, now, his third. And in the middle of the process he was pleasantly blindsided by a couple of short stories and poems each demanding attention. “Me, too,” they bawled.

Presently, Larry hopes he has reached the elusive “final” stages of completing his psychological mystery novels in preparation for publication. He is also an avid backpacker who wrote one of the earliest comprehensive books on hiking the Grand Canyon and is working on a second edition of this still popular guide.