Keats was born in
Moultrie, Georgia. He attended the
University of Michigan and the
University of Pennsylvania before serving in the
United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II. Keats worked for the
Washington Daily News in the 1950s. His debut as an author came in 1956 with
The Crack in the Picture Window, a broadside at sprawling suburban housing developments. He also wrote numerous magazine articles, which led to non-fiction books and biographies. In the 1950s, Keats bought "Pine Island", one of the
Thousand Islands, as a vacation home for himself, his wife and their three children. However, at the time of his death in 2000, he was living in Kingston, Ontario, where he had moved in order to be close to the island featured in his 1974 book
Of Time and an Island. From 1974 to 1990 Keats taught magazine writing at
Syracuse University. Keats died on November 3, 2000, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He was 79. == Works ==