Harris’ unusual upbringing gave him a unique perspective that he believes has had a significant impact on his creative process. His father’s work in the oil business led to him moving around a lot as a kid, including to other countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and Venezuela.
“When you live somewhere else, you’re kind of forced to be open to new ideas and to see things differently,” he said. “One of the traits that has served me well has been the ability to put myself in other peoples’ shoes and understand their experience.”
Harris said it was a shock transitioning from living in the Midwest for several years to suddenly living in third-world countries and that it affected him in both positive and negative ways.
“You would see absolute desperation in terms of poverty but at the same time that was juxtaposed with the indescribable natural beauty you would find there,” he said of Indonesia. “It was a bombardment of the senses, to be sure. I always had a great awareness of how unique the experience was.”
Harris recalls his first time visiting another country, which was a brief stay in Hong Kong, China. He didn’t see much of the city when he first arrived, as his family arrived late at night and he was tired, but he remembers waking up the next morning and being stunned by what he saw outside his hotel window.
“It had a pretty spectacular view, and it took my breath away realizing how far away I was from any experience I had ever had,” he said. “It was terrain unlike anything I had ever seen before. I’ll never forget that feeling standing there and knowing the life I had been living was over. This was something completely different.”
As he was entering high school, his family moved to a remote region of Sumatra, Indonesia that didn’t have a high school. He ended up attending a boarding school in Singapore for three years before finishing his education in Valencia, Venezuela. There were 10 people in his graduating class.
When it came time to think about college, Harris wasn’t sure what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go. He ended up attending St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, for two years before realizing he wasn’t quite ready for college.
“I was a bit of a lost soul. I had to find my way and I wasn’t sure what my path was,” he said.
Around this time, his family had settled in Bakersfield because his father got a job in the oil industry here. Harris decided to move to Bakersfield after visiting a few times. A couple of years after making the move, he decided he was finally ready to give college another try and enrolled at CSUB.
Harris wasn’t sure what to major in at first and was planning to pursue a liberal arts degree. That all changed, however, when the professor of a poetry class he was taking made note of his writing talent.
Dr. Jeffry Spencer was impressed with a paper Harris wrote analyzing a poem and asked if he was an English major. Upon learning that he wasn’t, she encouraged him to pursue the degree and introduced him to other professors in the English Department.
“I can’t say enough about the power of one person taking an interest in another person’s life, and what that can do — to validate something in another person,” Harris said. “You never know when that simple act can alter the trajectory of someone’s life. That was certainly the case for me. This opened up a path that I was always looking for to express myself creatively in the world of entertainment.”
Harris went on to earn his bachelor’s in English at CSUB in 1991 and received his master’s in American Literature from San Diego State University (SDSU) in 1993.
“English can be really beneficial in understanding story,” he said. “What I learned about critical thinking and understanding story, what makes a story work, has proven time and again to be very beneficial in the business I’m in today.”
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