A native of West Virginia, Edward Morris has distinguished himself as a teacher, author, humorist, magazine editor and playwright. Morris earned his undergraduate degree in English at Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston), where he served for three consecutive years as editor of the college weekly. He then took his master’s degree in journalism at Ohio University. Subsequently, he taught English and journalism at Findlay (Ohio) College, Bowling Green (Ohio) State University, Alice Lloyd College (Kentucky) and Edinboro (Pennsylvania) State College. In recent years, he has guest-lectured at Belmont University, Vanderbilt University and Trevecca College, all in Nashville, Tennessee.
Morris served as assistant editor at Writer’s Digest, the monthly trade magazine for writers, before moving on to various editorial positions at Billboard, the international music trade weekly. During the last four of his 14 years at Billboard, he was the magazine’s country music editor, a post that enabled him to chronicle the rise of country music to a dominant entertainment format.
As a writer, Morris has had articles published in Advertising Age, TV Guide, McCall’s, Hollywood Reporter, Amusement Business, Book Page, The Journal Of Country Music, The Mother Earth News, Baltimore Sun, BackStage, Bluegrass Unlimited, New Country, Tune In and elsewhere. He has been a correspondent for Advertising Age and was a columnist for International Musician and Music City News.
Morris books include Edward Morris’ Complete Guide To Country Music Videos (Storm Coast Press), Free & Low-Cost Publicity For Your Musical Act (with Norma Morris, Storm Coast Press), Garth Brooks: Platinum Cowboy (St. Martin’s Press), Alabama (Contemporary Books) and A Killing Froth: Or, On Edge At The Edge (Storm Coast Press). In addition, he has contributed to such reference works as the prize-winning Country: The Music & The Musicians (Abbeville Press), Classic Country (Time-Life Books) and Country On Compact Disc: The Essential Guide To The Music (Grove Press)
During the early 1990s, Morris was a humor columnist for the weekly Nashvillian. As a music critic, he has written liner notes for albums and box sets by The Judds, Keith Whitley, Eddy Arnold, Guy Clark, Hank Snow, Chet Atkins and many others.
In 2016, Morris wrote his first play, The Passion of Ethel Rosenberg, which enjoy multiple productions and performances in Nashville and Sante Fe, New Mexico, and which was given a public reading at the Untold Stories of Jewish Women Festival and New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Morris lives in Kingston Springs, Tennessee.