Bill Jamison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1942. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, received an undergraduate degree from the University of North Texas, and a graduate degree in American history from the University of Kansas. He worked as a professor at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos and for the Texas Arts Commission and the Oklahoma Council on the Arts and Humanities. In 1977, he became a regional representative for the National Endowment for the Arts, then director of the Western States Arts Foundation in Santa Fe. He finally decided to become a travel and food writer.
He wrote more than 20 travel books and cookbooks, most of them with his wife, Cheryl Alters Jamison. Their works included 100 Grill Recipes You Can't Live Without, The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining, Born to Grill, Smoke and Spice, and The Barbecue Lover's Big Book of BBQ Sauces. They also won four James Beard Foundation awards for culinary writing. He died of complications from cancer on March 24, 2015 at the age of 73.
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