Having survived a riotous drunken youth which included expulsion from high school,
almost incarceration in a reformatory, and other shenanigans best not revealed in polite company,
Byrnes freely admits he left his baseball talent in barrooms, along with most of his sanity.
Enrolling at Suffolk Community College in Selden, Long Island in 1977, Byrnes began his writing
career in the late professor-poet Dan Murray's creative writing courses. Byrnes also holds a
Bachelor of Arts in English from Dowling College, Oakdale, New York. While at Dowling, Byrnes taught
creative writing at the Hausman Center for Disabled Students. Byrnes recalls the workshop "as one of
the more honest efforts of my life." Also an accomplished artist, Byrne's paintings have been compared
to the likes of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning.
