Born and raised in Virginia, Chad received a BA in English at Lynchburg University before moving to Eastern Europe to teach English for several years. While in Krakow, Poland, he got his MA in European Studies at Jagiellonian University, with a focus in Comparative Literature. He went on to get his MFA in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he was also the coordinator of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, an intern in the Literature Department at the National Endowment for the Arts, and an editor at Blackbird and Broad Street literary journals.

Chad comes from the workshop model of creative writing and has a hands-on editorial approach to agenting. He is interested in narrative nonfiction with a strong emotional pull from journalists and writers who challenge the status quo. For fiction, he is particularly drawn to novels that are more character or plot-driven, horror and thrillers that are as inventive as they are suspenseful, speculative and historical fiction that offer a nuanced perspective on place, and graphic novels that push the boundaries of the genre.