John S. Hatcher
John S. Hatcher is a professor Emeritus in English literature at the University of South Florida in Tampa where he has taught for thirty-nine years and served as Director of Graduate Studies for four years, specializing in medieval English literature and creative writing.

Dr. Hatcher has published twenty-one books, some of which are translations of his works into Spanish, German, French, and Swedish. He has four books in various stages of completion, has written thirteen chapters in books by others, has published seventy-four poems in refereed journals, twelve scholarly papers, has presented more than twenty-four scholarly papers, and has given more than a hundred talks on the Bahá'í Faith in various public forums. In 2006 his two books The Purpose of Physical Reality and Close Connections were two of the nine books nominated by ForeWord magazine as best book of the year in the field of philosophy for the year 2005.

In 2006 Professor Hatcher was awarded the highest accolade for work in Bahá'í Studies, the Hasan Balyuzi Lectureship at the 29th annual meeting of the North American Association for Studies on the Bahá'í Faith. He has served on the Executive Board of the Association for Bahá'í Studies, as associate editor of the Journal of Bahá'í Studies, and as an officer on a variety of Bahá'í institutions and committees during his almost five decades as a Bahá'í.

He presently lives on a small farm in Plant City, Florida, with his wife Lucia. He has four children, six grandchildren, three chicken coops, thirteen cows, and a 3130 Kubota tractor with a front loader.