Writing Professors
These five authors teach creative writing as well as do it.
Don Bredes is a writing teacher and a versatile writer who published two “mainstream” novels. He wrote two more novels but was unable to find a publisher for them. Now he’s back, in a new genre: crime fiction.
Born in New York in 1947, he got his BA from Syracuse University and his MFA from the University of California—Irvine. He later settled in Vermont, and made it the scene of his fiction. He has received grants from the Vermont Council for the Arts. He has published stories (Paris Review) and nonfiction (New York Times). In an autobiographical piece, he mentioned delaying marrying and starting a family to devote himself to a writing career, and noted the difficulties the irregular income of a freelancer can cause a couple. He has taught creative writing in high school, college, and currently at the University of Maryland University College, an online university. He co-wrote the screenplay for A Stranger in the Kingdom, an independent film, in the late ‘90s. He also wrote the script for Where the Rivers Flow North, released in 1994.
His first two books were “mainstream” novels. After a novel-publishing gap of almost 20 years, his two recent novels are mysteries starring a series detective.
Novels
Hard Feelings Atheneum 1977 * Bantam 1981 *“The diction and tone are unnervingly accurate, and after finishing Hard Feelings one has the impression he has spent 10 straight hours with an average adolescent.” –New York Times
Muldoon Holt 1982 *
Cold Comfort Harmony 2001 *“Don Bredes is not exactly a household name right now, a situation that is somewhat puzzling to me, and one that I would hope to be temporary.” –Bookreporter.com
“Bredes complicates his story by involving too many briefly observed players in too many tangential angles of this land and drugs conspiracy. But he has a clear, unscented style that smells like fresh air.” –New York Times
The Fifth Season # Three Rivers Press 2005 * Random House pb and ebook 2005 “Here Mr. Bredes is in the great tradition of Dashiell Hammet, who pretty much defined the genre of American crime fiction.”—Barton Chronicle
“A much more literate and deeper thriller than the run-of-the-mill murder story.” –Rocky Mountain News
Main sources: Contemporary Authors
"About Men: Rights and Choices" by Don Bredes New York Times Feb. 21, 1988.
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-Broughton in 1977-
T. Alan Broughton is a teacher and practitioner of many genres of creative writing. He wrote four novels, all published in the period 1977-1984.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1936, Broughton attended Harvard and Julliard before graduating from Swarthmore. He got his M.A. from the University of Washington in 1964. In 1966 he began to teach at the University of Vermont, where he spent his entire career, becoming professor emeritus in 2001.
Broughton has done much to assist and encourage apprentice writers. In addition to directing the writers’ workshop at the University of Vermont, he has written for the Young Writers Project and The Writer magazine.
He has published many poems, stories, and articles, contributing to anthologies and periodicals ranging from Commonweal to Cosmopolitan. University presses and small presses have published collections of his works, starting in 1972. His most recent is Suicidal Tendencies: short stories from University Press of Colorado in 2003.
His novel-publishing phase was brief and fast-paced, with four “literary” novels appearing in hardcover from large New York publishers in seven years. As is generally the case, though, the writing took much longer. He told LJ that his first novel took 12 years to write, and told The Writer in 1992 that subsequent novels took at least 3 years. Several authors from the class of ’77 had similarly short careers with New York publishers, but found small presses to publish their novels. Broughton works with such presses on his story and poem collections, but he has apparently given up the long form.
Novels
A Family Gathering Dutton 1977 # “Action is somewhat disjointed and there is too much of the stereotyped South” –Library Journal
Winter Journey Dutton 1980 * # “Not a page turner; it grows on one slowly, even deliberately….a novel of so many virtues.” –Washington Post
The Horsemaster Dutton 1981 #
Hobb’s Daughter Morrow 1984 *#“skillfully and affectingly written” --New York Times
Main Source: Contemporary Authors
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Beverly Lowry’s six novels represent only one phase of an active writing career. In recent years she has devoted herself to non-fiction. She is an unusual combination of university teacher and “quality lit” novelist with popular journalist.
Born in Memphis in 1938, she received her B.A .in theatre from Memphis State in 1960. She has pulled off the rare feat of becoming a prof without a doctorate or master’s: she is currently associate professor of English at George Mason University. In addition, she has taught literature and/or creative writing at the University of Houston and the universities of Montana and Alabama. She writes for newspapers, including the New York Times, and magazines, including Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, and Granta.
“I wrote a lot in high school,” she told the Austin American-Statesman. “I come from a town of writers.” She was referring not to Memphis but to Greenville, Mississippi, where she grew up. Shelby Foote and Walker Percy were residents. In college she was more interested in plays, but then she went back to stories or novels. She credited Donald Barthelme with teaching her how to edit her work.
Lowry’s novel-writing career was interrupted by a personal tragedy, the death of her son in a hit-and-run accident, and her involvement with a female murderer on Death Row. The book she wrote about these experiences was Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir. Coming out during the “fact crime” boom of the late ‘80s-early ‘90s, the book was widely reviewed and made into a TV-movie. It remains her best-known book, wrote Thomas Fleming in 2003. She has published only one novel since it came out. Her interest then shifted to African-American biography. Her first subject was Madam C.J. Walker, America’s first black female millionaire. This embroiled her in controversy with Walker’s descendant, the author of a competing biography. Her most recent book is about Harriet Tubman.
Three of Lowry’s novels are set in a fictional counterpart of Greenville. Like most authors who publish with major New York houses, Lowry has shifted from one to another every couple of books.
Novels
Come Back, Lolly Ray Doubleday 1977 Louisiana University Press 2000* “But, reservations not withstanding, the flashes of Flannery O’Connor-like toughness are gratifying to the core. Lowry’s imagination proves sound and patient.” –New York Times
Emma Blue Doubleday 1978 *
Daddy’s Girl Viking 1981* Penguin 1981
The Perfect Sonya Viking 1987 Penguin 1988 Texas Christian University Press 2004 * “Middling contemporary [fiction of?] the self-discovery variety, not unappealing, not altogether successful.” –Library Journal
Breaking Gentle Viking 1988 Penguin 1991* “Another of Lowry’s broody, keenly detailed studies of that font of blood-deep imperatives, family.” Kirkus Reviews
The Track of Real Desires Knopf 1994* “Lowry’s latest novel is set in provincial Eunola, Mississippi, among a group of hapless mid life friends who view one another much as they did in high school.” --Library Journal
Main sources: Contemporary Authors, “Author Lowry Finds herself on Fast Track”by Anne Morris in the Austin American Statesman, 1994, “Straighten Up” by Thomas Fleming, New York Times 2003
Sheila Nickerson is a poet. She published one novel, then returned to poetry. She has also published nonfiction. She has a strong regional identification as an Alaskan.
Nickerson was born in 1941 in New York City. She got her bachelor’s in English from Bryn Mawr. In 1971, she moved to Alaska. To an inhabitant of the tame lower 48, her résumé suggests she was a resourceful jack of all literary trades in a place where wordsmiths were in short supply. She worked as proofreader-supervisor in a word processing center, editor of a prison literary magazine and of Alaska Fish & Game magazine, arts administrator and designer of writing programs for the public library, and teacher of creative and technical writing for the University of Alaska. After all that, and after publishing several books and being poet laureate of Alaska, she earned a doctorate in creative writing from Union Institute in 1985, at the age of 44. She currently lives in Washington State.
Nickerson told LJ in 1977 that she had written her novel, In Rooms of Falling Rain, seven years before. She wanted to see if she was up to the challenges of writing in the long form. The challenges were made more daunting by the fact that she was at home with two young children. She succeeded, and the book was brought out by a small press. She said that she had written a second novel and was in search of a publisher. The search was apparently unsuccessful.
She returned to her first love, poetry. She has published nine books of poems with small presses, and her works have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has also written two nonfiction books about interactions between early Arctic explorers and native peoples of Alaska, brought out by large New York publishers.
Novel
In Rooms of Falling Rain Thorp Springs 1977. “An evocative and poetic novel that ebbs and flows in perfect harmony with its subject.” –Library Journal
Main source: Contemporary Authors
C.E. Poverman works mostly in the short form, but he has published two “literary” novels and a thriller. A graduate of the famed Iowa workshop, he teaches creative writing. He has made the transition from large New York publishers to small regional ones.
Poverman was born in 1944. He received a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He joined the faculty of the University of Arizona at Tucson in 1977. A former director of the creative writing program, he became a full professor there. Currently he is at Middlebury College. He hasn’t spent his entire life on campuses, though; he also worked for a San Francisco private detective agency, an experience he used in his crime novel On the Edge. “It’s another way of seeing how the world really goes together,” he told Tucson Weekly. He has received numerous awards and grants, most unusually a Chesterfield fellowship which took him to Universal Studio to write screenplays.
The Iowa writer’s workshop provided Poverman with a sound basis for his career. His first book, a short story collection, was published by University of Iowa Press and won the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction in 1976. The next year, Viking published his first novel, and the University of Arizona hired him. His stories have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies. He has also published another collection.
Novels
Susan Viking 1977*
Solomon’s Daughter Viking 1981*
My Father in Dreams Scribner 1988* “Not so much a novel as a series of short stories that lurches around the narcissistic Jed Hartwick and his equally unlikeable family and friends.” –New York Times
On the Edge Ontario Review Press 1997 * “This is entertainment that could make you think.” --Tucson Weekly
Main sources: Tucson Weekly 1998, Contemporary Authors
*Available through amazon.com #In stock at St. Louis County Public Library
