Rick Snedeker is a retired American journalist/editor who now writes in various media and pens nonfiction books. He has received nine past top South Dakota state awards for newspaper column, editorial, and headline writing. Snedeker’s 2018 debut book, “3,001 Arabian Days: A Memoir,” received a third-place award in the Colorado Independent Publishers Association 36th annual Eppy literary competition in 2020. In 2021, his second book, “Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the True American Dream” (2020), received an honorable mention in Writer’s Digest’s 2022 national Self-Published Books Awards contest. He was born in New York state in 1950 and, besides his childhood experience in Saudi Arabia, returned there twice as an adult to live and work.