The author of six books - Document, Cloudbreak, Crossroads, Cathedrals in the Twilight, Of Time and Rivers, and the creator, producer, and author of the highly-acclaimed podcast Welcome to the Machine and the book on which it is based, Glen Hines was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and graduated from George Washington University School of Law in Washington, DC. His writing on military service, sports, current events, the outdoors, and the bright and dark sides of American culture has been published in various outlets, such as Sports Illustrated, SI-The Cauldron, Task and Purpose, the Human Development Project and elsewhere. The Welcome to the Machine podcast was featured on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and most other popular podcast platforms.
The son of a professional athlete and a career high school English teacher, he began his writing career as a lawyer, working for a few years in a corporate legal department and law firm. Needing a greater challenge and seeking a higher calling, in 1997, he entered the United States Marine Corps as an officer and judge advocate. For over two decades, he has served in various roles as a prosecutor, appellate government counsel, terrorism prosecutor in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a military trial and appellate judge five different times. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, having served overseas in Kuwait, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Naval Station Bahrain, and elsewhere. From 2000-2002 and 2012-2014, he also served two stints as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice.
He has taught at the Naval Justice School, the Army Judge Advocate General’s School, the University of Arkansas School of Law, and Texas A&M University Law School.
A former NCAA Division 1 letterman in football and baseball at two different schools, he is the only University of Arkansas two-sport athlete to have played on conference championship football and baseball teams (1989). His military service and athletic career have provided the ideas and basis for countless stories in his books and elsewhere. He is also a member of the Family Advisory Board at the Boston University CTE Center's Concussion Legacy Foundation and a member of the Surfrider Foundation. He was inducted into the Authors Guild in 2022.
