Kent Haruf
| Kent Haruf | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 24, 1943 Pueblo, Colorado |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Salida, Colorado |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Genre | Fiction |
Alan Kent Haruf (February 24, 1943 – November 30, 2014) was an American novelist.
Life
Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister. He graduated with a BA from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965, where he would later teach, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973.
Before becoming a writer, Haruf worked in a variety of places, including a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Denver, a hospital in Phoenix, a presidential library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in Turkey, and colleges in Nebraska and Illinois. He lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado until his death in 2014. He had three daughters from his first marriage.
All[1] of Haruf's novels take place in the fictional town of Holt, in eastern Colorado. Holt is based on Yuma, Colorado, one of Haruf's residences in the early 1980s. His first novel, The Tie That Binds (1984), received a Whiting Award and a special Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation. Where You Once Belonged followed in 1990. A number of his short stories have appeared in literary magazines.
Plainsong was published in 1999 and became a U.S. bestseller. Verlyn Klinkenborg called it "a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader."[2] Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
Eventide, a sequel to Plainsong, was published in 2004. Library Journal described the writing as "honest storytelling that is compelling and rings true." Jonathan Miles saw it as a "repeat performance" and "too goodhearted."[3][4]
On November 30, 2014, Haruf died at his home in Salida, Colorado[5] at the age of 71.[6] He died of interstitial lung disease.[7][8]
Recognition
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- 1986 - Whiting Award for fiction
- 1999 - Finalist for the 1999 National Book Award for Plainsong[9]
- 2005 - Colorado Book Award for Eventide[10]
- 2005 - Finalist for the Book Sense Award for Eventide[9]
- 2009 - Dos Passos Prize for Literature[9]
- 2012 - Wallace Stegner Award[9][11]
- 2014 - Folio Prize shortlist for Benediction[12][13]
Works
Novels
- The Tie That Binds (1984)
- Where You Once Belonged (1990)
- Plainsong (1999)
- Eventide (2004)
- Benediction (2013); also premiered as a play at the Denver Center Theatre in February 2015.[14]
- Our Souls at Night (May 26, 2015)[15]
Essays
- The Making of a Writer. Granta Magazine, issue 129: "Fate". London: Granta, 2014.
Other
- West of Last Chance, with photographer Peter Brown (2008)
References
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- Meet the Writers: Kent Haruf Barnes and Noble profile and interview
- Q & A with Kent Haruf
- What the Critics Say About Kent Haruf
- Notable Former Volunteers / Arts and Literature – Peace Corps official site
- Profile at The Whiting Foundation
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- ↑ "The Sheltering Sky" New York Times review, October 10, 1999
- ↑ "Eventide: Where the Dust Motes Glow" New York Times review, May 23, 2004
- ↑ Identitytheory.com On this, Haruf said: "...the review in the Sunday New York Times by Jonathan Miles—it was a smart-ass review. A quintessential hip cynical eastern view of things. The following Tuesday Kakutani wrote her review, which for her, was a rave. A very positive review. So I figured her review cancelled his out."
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/books/kent-haruf-sublime-novelist-of-small-town-life-dies-at-71.html?_r=0
- ↑ The Washington Post. "Novelist Kent Haruf" retrieved November 30, 2014.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 "Q & A with Colorado author Kent Haruf", Colorado Central Magazine, April 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.
- ↑ Colorado Humanities. Colorado Book Awards History.
- ↑ Center of the American West. Kent Haruf: 2012 Wallace Stegner Award Recipient.
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- Pages with reference errors
- Incomplete lists from February 2014
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- American male novelists
- Writers from Colorado
- Nebraska Wesleyan University alumni
- Peace Corps volunteers
- People from Pueblo, Colorado
- 1943 births
- 2014 deaths
- Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
- University of Iowa alumni
- Deaths from lung disease
- Nebraska Wesleyan University faculty
