Victor Pollak, writer and lawyer, has traveled frequently in Europe, including France, where he became fascinated learning about preservation of cultural monuments, accomplished so successfully by the French. He has also visited the Middle East, Mexico and South America. Saving the Light at Chartres is his first book. He divides his time between Arizona and Washington’s Olympic peninsula.
Pollak was born in Evanston, Illinois to a father who had emigrated from Austria in 1938 and a mother who had grown up in Detroit as one of seven daughters of Hungarian immigrants. While in college, he worked in radio, a sound recording studio in Philadelphia, film production, teaching in an outdoor school in New Hampshire, as a junior executive in the toy department of Macy's flagship store in New York City, and as a junior instructor for two summers in month-long wilderness expeditions of the Colorado Outward Bound School. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and communications from Antioch College. After a year in publishing, he entered Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, from which he graduated with honors. He went on to serve as a law clerk to a Federal Court of Appeals judge and began his more than thirty years of transactional business law practice in Chicago, where he co-founded the firm’s international practice, opening offices in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. After his first 17 years of law practice, he moved with his wife and children to Salt Lake City, where he co-founded a biomedical R&D start-up company and served as its CEO and general counsel. After 7 years, he returned to law practice with a Salt Lake City law firm. In 2019, he earned his MFA in Writing from Pacific University. In 2019, he earned his MFA in Writing from Pacific University. He divides his time between Arizona and Washington’s Olympic peninsula. Saving the Light at Chartres is his first book.