Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House. He calls the nation’s capital home now and has for over three decades. During those early years of living in Washington DC, he spent many a night trodding the boards of DC’s theaters and performing arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and Studio Theatre.
He even scored a few television screen appearances, including a residuals-rich Super Bowl halftime commercial, which his accountant quipped “is the finest work of your career.”
Ultimately he stepped away from acting, keen to use his stage-and-screen-performer’s deep understanding of the art of storytelling in a different way. To that end, he provided communications counsel to some of the nation’s leading landscape architects, as together they described the wonders of a garden well-planned. Next, he worked closely with military veterans, helping them tell their stories of war-torn life in service to their country. At the same time, he focused on pursuing post-graduate work, ultimately being awarded Master’s degrees in both Public Administration and Library and Information Science. Today, he is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise.
Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a gay, physically misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep South.
Red Clay Suzie was longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize.
Four-year-old Jeffrey on the path to Grandaddy’s.
Four-year-old Jeffrey riding his pedal car.
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House. He calls the nation’s capital home now and has for over three decades. During those early years of living in Washington DC, he spent many a night trodding the boards of DC’s theaters and performing arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and Studio Theatre.
He even scored a few television screen appearances, including a residuals-rich Super Bowl halftime commercial, which his accountant quipped “is the finest work of your career.”
Ultimately he stepped away from acting, keen to use his stage-and-screen-performer’s deep understanding of the art of storytelling in a different way. To that end, he provided communications counsel to some of the nation’s leading landscape architects, as together they described the wonders of a garden well-planned. Next, he worked closely with military veterans, helping them tell their stories of war-torn life in service to their country. At the same time, he focused on pursuing post-graduate work, ultimately being awarded Master’s degrees in both Public Administration and Library and Information Science. Today, he is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise.
Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a gay, physically misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep South.