Biographical Sketch
Roger Vaughan grew up in Massachusetts where his father was a small town general practitioner who made house calls. At age 8, Roger began writing, taking photographs, playing music, and sailing, all of which became life long pursuits. Personal offshore yacht racing experiences include the lethal '79 Fastnet Race, and a leg of the Whitbread Race 1990 around Cape Horn. He graduated from the Choate School, and received a BA in English from Brown University.
Vaughan worked in mass print media as editor and writer in Philadelphia and New York for ten years, at Saturday Evening Post, and LIFE magazines. Assigned briefly to LIFE's Chicago Bureau where he covered 17 states, he returned to Manhattan to run LIFE's Youth and Education Department, covering experimental education, the Monterrey and Woodstock music festivals, Bob Dylan, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s.
Fleeing the big city, Vaughan moved to Rhode Island and worked as commercial fisherman, photographer, short-order pizza cook, and Director of Brown's News Bureau before focusing on a freelance writing career after The Grand Gesture, his first book, was published in 1973. Grand Gesture, about a struggling America's Cup syndicate, began an ongoing involvement with coverage of the America's Cup. He has written twenty other books since then, including biographies of media magnate, Ted Turner; the late Berlin Philharmonic Music Director, Herbert von Karajan; live polio vaccine pioneer Hilary Koprowski; and educator/philanthropist Harry Anderson; and Arthur Curtiss James, railroad baron. Vaughan worked for many years as a writer for ESPN TV; has written and directed a score of videos; co-authored the story for the feature film Wind; and was founding editor of TheYACHT magazine. Assignments have taken him to 44 of the States, and more than 20 countries.
Writing about accomplished people has always been Vaughan's major interest. Among the many he has written about are: Roy Disney, Olin Stephens, Malcolm Forbes, Irving Johnson, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ann Sophie Mutter, Seiji Ozawa, Andy Warhol, Lee Marvin, and HRH Princess Margaret.
Roger Vaughan moved to Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1980. After 40 years in Oxford, he and his wife Kippy moved to Easton, Maryland in 2021.