Terry Davis was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. The son of a housewife and a sales executive, Davis excelled at Shadle Park High School as a wrestler and basketball player, then studied English at Eastern Washington University where he met fellow student Chris Crutcher — a year his senior.

Recognized early as a gifted writer, Davis went from Eastern to study under John Irving at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and later at Stanford University as an honored Wallace Stegner Literary Fellow. It was here that the novel Vision Quest began to take shape.

To fans of novelist Terry Davis, it is no news that he loves motorcycles.They play a role in most of his fiction and articles, and in Mankato Minnesota Davis riding around on a Norton or Yamaha is a familiar sight.Now Davis is carrying that passion a step further in real life. Terry Davis' Clandestine Classic Cycles opened in Rapidan, Minnesota on May 01, 2007. Opening Clandestine Classic Cycles is the realization of a long term dream for Terry Davis whose love for classic bikes is clearly displayed in his 1992 novel If Rock & Roll Were a Machine. Davis continues to teach and write.

Davis's latest work, which Davis has been working on for more that a year, is about a man's struggle with clinical depression after his girlfriend gets addicted to online poker and is sent back to her homeland in Africa.

"A lot of his work is about people that are challenged in one way or another or sometimes they give themselves a challenge," Robbins said. "A lot of what he's writing about is personal courage and finding a way to come to a better understanding about what you're capable of as an individual." Richard Robbins of MSUM said.

"I write it for people to read and be touched by," Davis said.

And while writing is a struggle, it's one he seems to enjoy.

"I struggle with every sentence and word choice," he said, "but it's a great battle."