Mack Dryden

Mack Leon Dryden (born June 30, 1949) is an American comedian, motivational speaker, actor, and writer.

Dryden was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Dryden graduated from Moss Point High School in 1967.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and English in 1971 at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) where he also earned a black belt in taekwondo. He was very active on the karate tournament circuit while at Ole Miss and won numerous trophies in sparring and kata (form) competitions. He was the Brown Belt champion of Mississippi when he was 20 years old.

Additionally while a senior at Ole Miss, a short story he wrote won First Place for Fiction in the Mississippi Arts Festival, which led to an offer to study creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). He won a fellowship to the Center for Writers at USM where he earned his Master of Arts degree in 1972.

Dryden worked at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula for a while after receiving his Master of Arts degree at USM. He saved money and left for Europe with a backpack and $1,000 in May 1973. He stayed for 15 months, crisscrossing the continent, living in a van, making his living in various ways, including picking grapes in France and writing for a newspaper in the town of Rota, Spain where a United States Navy base is located. He then went to Morocco where he would buy beads, bring them back to Europe and made a good living selling hippie jewelry in campgrounds from Paris, France to London, England to Barcelona, Spain. On one of his three buying trips to Morocco, he got into a ferocious fistfight with a man who was trying to rob him and spent some time in a prison before things got sorted out.

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