Lance Ringel has enjoyed a four-decade career as a journalist and writer. He first published his novel Flower of Iowa, about two soldiers who fall in love on the Western Front in World War I France, as an eBook in 2014. This debut met with unexpected success in the United States and Europe, and in 2020, the book was published in hardcover. Concurrently, Ringel's reputation as a playwright was growing. His play In Love with the Arrow Collar Man, based on the true story of famed illustrator J.C. Leyendecker and his muse-lover Charles Beach, premiered at New York’s Theatre 80 St. Marks. Both Arrow Collar Man and the musical Animal Story, for which Ringel wrote books and lyrics, with music by Chuck Muckle, made the semifinals of the New York New Works Film Festival, and his stage adaptation of Flower of Iowa subsequently made the finals of the festival. At Vassar College, where he has worked for 20 years, Ringel wrote Vassar Voices, which premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Meryl Streep, Frances Sternhagen and Lisa Kudrow. He also wrote the narrative for At Home in the World, which played in Tokyo, New York, Washington, and Kampala, under the direction of John Caird. A native of central Illinois, Ringel currently resides in both New York City and in Poughkeepsie, NY, with his spouse of 43 years, actor-composer-director Chuck Muckle.