Evans, David Allan: - David Allan Evans grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. He began college on a football scholarship, and by the time he graduated--majoring in English and minoring in Biology--he was writing poetry and fiction. His interest in literature and natural history began in his teens when his self-educated father recited Shakespeare and spoke often of Darwin and other great observers of animals. The author of nine collections of poems, he was a professor of English and writer in residence at South Dakota State University for many years, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, twice in China, and poet laureate of South Dakota for 14 years.