Early life Henry Garfield was born in Washington, D.C. on February 13, 1961, and grew up in the Glover Park neighborhood of the city. An only child, his parents divorced when he was a toddler; he suffered from low self-esteem and a poor attention span as a child.[1] He was raised primarily by his mother, Iris, who taught him to read before he entered public school;[2] however, because of "bad grades, bad attitude, poor conduct," he was soon sent to The Bullis School, a preparatory school in Potomac, Maryland. According to Rollins, the Bullis School helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic.[1] It was at Bullis that he began writing; his early literary efforts were mainly short stories about "blowing up my school and murdering all the teachers."[2] Despite the relative affluence of Glover Park, for Rollins "it was a very rough upbringing in a lot of other ways. I accumulated a lot of rage by the time I was seventeen or eighteen....