William O. Stephens was born in Lafayette, and raised in West Lafayette, Indiana. After two years at the College of Wooster in Ohio Stephens transferred to Earlham, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana where he studied Greek and Latin and earned a B.A. in philosophy in 1984. Stephens received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. In autumn of that year he joined the Arts & Sciences faculty at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is Professor of Philosophy and of Classical & Near Eastern Studies.He has published articles on topics in Stoicism, Epicureanism and friendship, ecology and vegetarianism, ethics and animals, sex and love, sportsmanship, and the concept of a person. His books include an English translation of Adolf Bonhöffer’s work The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus (Peter Lang, 1996), an edited collection The Person: Readings in Human Nature (Prentice Hall, 2006), Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (Continuum, 2007), and Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2012).Stephens' travels include the island of Rhodes, Crete, and mainland Greece, New Zealand, Iceland, the Bahamas, Cornwall, Scotland, Mexico, Canada, Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, and Antarctica. Stephens enjoys tennis, chess, hiking, spelunking, kayaking, and nature photography. He has visited all of the U.S. states except Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. From an early age he has closely followed the misadventures of the Chicago Cubs, which helps explain his interest in Stoicism. He lives with two cats in an old arts & crafts style house in Omaha.