Biography kent haruf

PERSONAL: Surname rhymes with "sheriff"; born February 24, 1943, in Pueblo, CO; cobble together of Louis A. (a Wesleyan preacher) and Eleanor V. (a teacher and homemaker; maiden term, Shaver) Haruf; married Virginia Youth. Koon (divorced); married Cathy Dempsey; children: Sorel, Whitney, Chaney (daughters).

Education: Nebraska Wesleyan University, B.A., 1965; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1973.

ADDRESSES: Home—P. O. Box 1580, Salida, CO 81201. Agent—Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic, 65 Bleecker St., New York, NY 10012.

CAREER: Worked odd jobs, including region laborer, construction worker, rural sheet route carrier, hospital orderly, discharge worker, librarian, and orphanage podium parent; served in the Ataraxia Corps in Turkey, 1965-67; ormed high school English in River and Colorado, 1976-86; Nebraska Methodist University, Lincoln, assistant professor, 1986-91; Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, companion professor, 1991-2000.

AWARDS, HONORS: PEN/Hemingway Initiate Special Citation, 1985; American Den Notable Books Award, 1985; Hake Writer's Award, Mrs.

Giles Hake Foundation, 1986, for The Fasten That Binds; Maria Thomas Present, 1991; National Book Award finalist in fiction, 1999, Mt. Apartment Booksellers Award, 2000, Salon.com Trophy haul, 2000, Alex Award, 2000, New Yorker Fiction Award finalist, 2000, Los Angeles Times Fiction Stakes finalist, 2000, Book Sense Prize 1 finalist, 2000, 10th Colorado Deficient Companions

Literary Award, 2002, and OneBook-AZ 2003 award, nominated for blue blood the gentry Dublin IMPAC 2001 Literary Grant, all for Plainsong.

WRITINGS:

novels

The Tie Depart Binds, Holt (New York, NY), 1984.

Where You Once Belonged, Acme Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Plainsong, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

Eventide, Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

Also contributor of short stories hitch periodicals, including Puerto del Phoebus, Grand Street, Prairie Schooner, obtain Gettysburg Review. Stories have exposed in Best American Short Stories, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1987; and Where Past Meets Present, University of Colorado Press (Boulder, CO), 1994.

ADAPTATIONS: Haruf's short fact "Private Debts/Public Holdings" was fit into a short film spawn Nancy Cooperstein for Chanticleer Motion pictures, 1987.

CBS has acquired fleece option for TV rights lay at the door of Plainsong and The Tie Roam Binds. Plainsong has been qualified for audio.

SIDELIGHTS: The son attention a Methodist minister, Kent Haruf was born and raised involved the flatlands of northeastern River, an environment that provides birth background for his fiction.

Haruf's career path to his longtime ambition of writing was practised slow and convoluted one, wide attendance at several universities, neat as a pin stint in the Peace Detachment in Turkey (where he fountain pen his first short stories), most recent numerous odd jobs, including life a janitor while he waited for the Iowa Writers Studio to "take pity on him," as he told Denver Post interviewer Nancy Lofholm.

After graduating from the prestigious University translate Iowa Writers Workshop at leadership age of thirty, Haruf homecoming worked construction and shelved office books in Colorado, then cultivated high-school English while he at one`s leisure developed his writing. He exact not make his first found in print, a short parcel in a literary magazine, undecided eleven years later at leadership age of forty-one.

That unchanging year, 1984, his first history was published. Speaking with Gents Blades of Publishers Weekly, Haruf described Holt, the fictional inner-city that provides the setting send off for his novels, as his grow dim "little postage stamp of catalogue soil." Holt is a in short supply Colorado farming community, close connected with the Kansas and Nebraska district and more akin to high-mindedness rural environments of those states than it is to worldwide Denver to the west.

Blades noted: "Along with its adjacent farms and homesteads, Holt has proved as fertile—and will in all likelihood be as inexhaustible—for Haruf's untruth as the apocryphal Yoknapatawpha Dependency was for Faulkner's."

Haruf's first account, The Tie That Binds, registers the long, hard life help Edith Goodnough, born near description turn of the twentieth c Edith's story is told brush aside Sanders Roscoe, the son authentication the man Edith loved on the contrary refused to marry, giving communication her chance at happiness ingratiate yourself with care for a tyrannical paralytic father.

The Tie That Binds garnered Haruf several honors, with the 1986 Whiting Writer's Reward. The novel was praised infant critics as well; Ruth Doan MacDougall in the Christian Study Monitor observed that Haruf's "characters live, and the voice dressing-down his narrator reverberates after honourableness last page: humorous, ironic, loving." Chris Wall in the Los Angeles Times Book Review hailed The Tie That Binds variety "an impressive, expertly crafted office of sensitivity and detail, elsewhere the hokum that usually accompanies sad tales of simple platoon and their domineering fathers." Haruf also won accolades from Commodore Glasser in the New Royalty Times Book Review. The judge declared that the author's "work is rooted in a mother wit of place; his eye boss ear are faithful to authority subject." The novel brought him "a $25,000 Whiting Award, graceful PEN/Hemingway citation, and a experienced teaching freshman composition at Nebraska Wesleyan," according to Blades.

Haruf followed The Tie That Binds greet his 1991 work, Where Order around Once Belonged. This book centers on Jack Burdette, a bad former high school football protagonist who manages to ruin patronize lives in his home urban of Holt, Colorado.

Narrating Jack's story is a man make sense a stake in the legend, newspaper editor Pat Arbuckle. Richard Eder in the Los Angeles Times Book Review offered neat as a pin laudatory assessment of Where Tell what to do Once Belonged, calling it "taut and deadly," and applauding picture "disciplined economy" of "Haruf's writing." The critic concluded that nobility author's second novel is practised "stirring and remarkable book." Marvellous Publishers Weekly reviewer called dignity book a "deeply affecting novel," and noted that "not neat word is wasted in [Haruf's] brooding drama." A commentator edify Kirkus Reviews observed that Haruf "does a beautiful job precision capturing small-town life."

Haruf wrote rule first two novels by usual means.

With his third sharp-tasting tried a radically different mode. Removing his glasses and classification a stocking cap (not wool) over his eyes, he category his first draft blind rearrange an old manual typewriter. Haruf's aim, as related by Blades, was "to achieve freshness post spontaneity without being distracted preschooler the sight of words group the page." Haruf also uttered the Boston Herald's Rosemary Musician, "Unlike the computer, which wants another command to make description work go on paper, ethics typewriter is more simple, straight.

Something about the sound invoke the keys hitting makes diversity obvious connection between what tell what to do think and the results paying attention get." The result was Plainsong, a novel subsequently lauded fail to notice critics even more highly fondle Haruf's earlier books. Even heretofore its publication, Plainsong began design special attention.

According to Lallapalooza Maryles of Publishers Weekly, "Knopf's enthusiasm for [the novel] began last spring with the reproduction being passed around in-house; portend a while, it was position most photocopied manuscript on Knopf's fall list." On the underpinning of editorial response to ethics book, a larger first print was planned, along with appended publicity that included a twelve-city tour for Haruf.

In the epigraph to Plainsong, Haruf states consider it the title of the unspoiled refers to the "simple come to rest unadorned" vocal melodies, sometimes vocal by alternating voices, that own acquire been used in Christian churches for centuries.

The novel tells the story of six greater characters and several subsidiary bend, and like a plainsong, glory action is related from up perspectives of different characters spitting image different chapters. Once again significance setting is Holt, Colorado, bear its environs. The plot begins with three separate tales dump ultimately intertwine.

A pregnant for children, Victoria Roubideaux, is kicked slam of her home by join mother; a local high institution history teacher, Tom Guthrie, assessment abandoned by his wife roost left to raise his match up young sons alone; and bend over elderly bachelor brothers, Harold skull Raymond McPherson, have consigned man to an isolated existence persuade their cattle ranch miles liberate yourself from town.

"Although the intersection only remaining these three sets of remote lives might normally have conclude the melodramatic makings of a-one provincial soap opera," noted Michiko Kakutani in the New Royalty Times, "Mr. Haruf orchestrates their convergence with such authority avoid grace that their stories arrive before the reader's eyes deficient in a shred of contrivance."

Writing bed a lean prose style lapse several reviewers compared to range of Hemingway, Haruf portrays greatness lives of his characters come across the fall of one generation through the spring of prestige next, often using images evade the natural world and integrity changing seasons to complement leadership changes they experience.

"A fugue upon weather and light plays throughout the novel," observed Verlyn Klinkenborg in a glowing regard of the novel for nobility New York Times Book Review, while Donna Seaman of Booklist commented: "Haruf's narrative voice decline spare and procedural, and cap salt-of-the-earth characters are reticent wellnigh to the point of idiosyncrasy until it becomes clear depart their terseness is the outcome of profound shyness and drawing immensity of feeling.

Haruf's noteworthy tale is both emotionally set of connections and elemental, following, as gallop so gracefully does, the procession of life, death, and rebirth." London Observer critic, Selina Refine remarked, "Many American writers much as Cormac McCarthy have handled the subject of Midwest campo towns and uncommunicative inhabitants beforehand.

Fiction, too, has often relied on musical form for account structure. Haruf, however, offers well-organized fresh approach by creating layers, which intensify and deepen translation the novel progresses, alternating among each character's life at the whole number chapter. Like the 'unadorned melody' in the book's epigraph, representation prose is simple and understated." Christian Stayner for the Christian Science Monitor described the notation as "richly-written." Although less annihilate with the power of Plainsong than most reviewers, Robin Nesbitt of Library Journal nevertheless throw it to be both "lyrical and well crafted" and unornamented "tight narrative about how families can be made between folk who are not necessarily ethnic group relatives [that] makes for pleasurable reading."

Knopf's confidence in Plainsong was justified when the novel became a National Book Award finalist and appeared on the Publishers Weekly best-seller lists, prompting too paperback reprints of Haruf's bottom novels.

Discussing with Blades empress "sudden" success at the contact of fifty-six, Haruf noted: "This country's crazy in terms give an account of fame and what people collect it means. They expect unembellished writer to be something halfway a Hollywood starlet and decency village idiot…. Fame is very much seductive and can be truly dangerous if you're trying take get your work done." Lofholm quoted him on his success: "Haruf said writing has gotten more difficult: 'Your standards move.

You want to do thrive better than you've done before.' He knows he's succeeded conj at the time that a New York Times discussion calls Plainsong 'a novel rectangle, so delicate and lovely, depart it has the power pull out exalt the reader.' But Haruf said he really knows he's made it when an familiarize plains dairy farmer stabs finger onto the cover be proper of A Tie That Binds current says 'now that is perfectly right'."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Academic Criticism, Volume 34, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

periodicals

Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), April 2, 2003, p.

E1.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 30, 2000, holder.

D2.

Austin American-Statesman, October 10, 1999, p. K6.

Booklist, August, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Plainsong, p. 1986; January 1, 2000, p. 819; April 1, 2000, p. 1449.

Boston Herald, December 15, 2000, p. 051, interview.

Christian Study Monitor, December 7, 1984, possessor.

B12; October 21, 1999, possessor. 13.

Denver Post, October 17, 2001, p. F-01.

Entertainment Weekly, November 5, 1999, Megan Harlan, "The Week," p. 76.

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies make a way into Literature and Environment, winter, 2003, p. 185.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1989, pp.

1618-1619.

Library Journal, Oct 1, 1984, review of The Tie That Binds, p. 1861; January, 1990, Joseph Levandoski, dialogue of Where You Once Belonged, p. 148; September 1, 1999, Robin Nesbitt, review of Plainsong, p. 232; July 2000, owner. 162.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 27, 1985, p. 4; February 11, 1990, pp.

3, 7.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 15, 1999, p. 1E. News & Record (Piedmont Triad, NC), Nov 14, 1999, p. H5.

Newsweek, Oct 4, 1999, Jeff Giles, "The Heart of the Country," possessor. 67.

New York Review of Books, October 21, 1999, Joyce Chant Oates, "Wearing out the West," p. 30.

New York Times, Oct 8, 1999, pp.

B45, E47; December 1, 1999, pp. B4, E1.

New York Times Book Review, January 6, 1985, Perry Glasser, review of The Tie Delay Binds, p. 16; October 3, 1999, p. 7.

Observer (London, England), May 14, 2000, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, August 24, 1984, discussion of The Tie That Binds, p.

74; December 1, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review adherent Where You Once Belonged, holder. 47; August 2, 1999, debate of Plainsong, p. 70; Oct 25, 1999, Daisy Maryles, "This Novel Just Sings," p. 19; November 1, 1999, review footnote Plain-song, pp. 46, 59, Bathroom Blades, "Kent Haruf: Home split up the Plains," p. 59; Feb 7, 2000, p.

22; Sept 4, 2000, p. 24.

Rocky Mound News (Denver, CO), February 27, 2000, p. 2E.

School Library Journal, June, 2000, p. 173.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 8, 1999, p. E2.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), December 12, 1999, p. 004.

Time, October 25, 1999, Elizabeth Gleick, review of Plainsong, p.

130.

Times (London, England), Apr 22, 2000, p. 22; Apr 28, 2001, p. 16.

Wall Thoroughfare Journal, October 8, 1999, possessor. W10; October 11, 1999, owner. B1.

online

January Magazine.com, http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (November 1999), review of Plainsong.

PageOneLit.com, http://www.pageonelit.com/ (March 9, 2004), interview with Haruf.

PeaceCorpsWriters.com, http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/ (March 4, 2004), talk with Haruf,

Random House Web site, http://www.randomhouse.com/ (March 9, 2004), question period with Haruf.*