John smolens biography
- About the Author John Smolens is the.
- I was born in New York, raised in Greater Boston, and at the age of 32 attended the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
- JOHN SMOLENS has published eleven works of fiction, ten novels and a collection of short stories.
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Q&A with John Smolens
Former head of Creative Writing at Northern Michigan U, John Smolens has published ten works of fiction, most recently Wolf’s Mouth, a 2017 Michigan Notable Book selection. Four of his earlier novels were reissued in paperback in 2017 by the MSU Press. In 2010, he received the Michigan Author of the Year Award from the Michigan Library Association. www.johnsmolens.com
Posted on March 16, 2018 by arallyofwriters@att.net in Uncategorized
John Smolens will be presenting a session on writing a novel: “An act of faith, hope and stupidity: why we writing novels anyway.” We concur. It is a mystery, and we do it anyway. A short bio of John is on the CONFERENCE page. www.johnsmolens.com
How did you find your genre as a novelist? Did you experiment with others?
I like to think that I don’t work in “my genre”—or any genre, for that matter. The notion seems confining to me. Recently you see some novels described as “genre-bending”—something like that. I think most novels have been doing that for a long, long time. Cri Wolf's Mouth A Novel by John Smolens Michigan State University Press, February 2016 Quarantine & The Schoolmaster's Daughter, by John Smolens Quarantine A Novel by John Smolens Pegasus Books, New York (distributed by W. W. Norton) Publication date: September 5, 2012 Blurbs for John Smolens's Novels "John Smolens is that rare and gifted writer who can capture both our exterior and interior worlds with equal dexterity, grace and power. His characters will stay with you long after turning the last page." --Andre Dubus III (Townies) "A fine writer with a profound knowledge of human behavior gone awry." --Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall) Biography John Smolens was educated at Boston College, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Iowa. He taught at Michigan State University, and is currently teaching in the Master of Fine Arts program at Northern Michigan University, where he has been the recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award. In 2010 he received the Michigan Author of the Year Award from The Michigan Library Association. In 1924, an orphan train passes through the Midwest, and two teenagers, seeking a new life, find nothing but hardship when taken in to live on a farm in Michigan. Mercy, a teenage girl of mixed race, and a boy nicknamed Rope, who lost fingers in a factory accident, become virtual prisoners of Harlan and Estelle Nau, whose children died during the Spanish flu epidemic. After facing abuse, Mercy and Rope flee, making an arduous journey into sparsely populated northern Michigan, where Mercy believes she will find her aunt. After Harlan is found murdered on his farm, police captain Jim Kincaid pursues Mercy and Rope to the cold, barren villages on the Mackinac Straits, but his efforts are complicated by the reemergent Ku Klux Klan, which has formed a coalition with the police deputy Milt Waters and the Dingley brothers, who run a local bootleg operation. Resolute and intrepid, Mercy and Rope develop a bond of mutual trust that helps them navigate a stark American landscape shaped by prejudice, hypocrisy, and fear. In 1924, an orphan train passes through the Mi
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A Cold, Hard Prayer
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