Ron Carlson
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Ron Carlson is an American novelist and short story writer.
Carlson was born in Logan, Utah in 1947, but grew up in Salt Lake City. He received a masters degree in English from the University of Utah. He then taught at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he began his first novel.
He became a professor of English at Arizona State University in 1985, teaching creative writing to undergraduates and graduates, and ultimately becoming director of its Creative Writing Program.
Carlson currently teaches at the University of California, Irvine.
[edit] Bibliography
Ron Carlson has written five novels to date:
- Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977)
- Truants (1981)
- The Speed of Light (2003)
- Five Skies (2007)
- "The Signal" (Viking, 2009) about a divorced couple's adventure in the Wyoming mountains.
He has written four well-regarded collections of short stories:
- News of the World (1987)
- Plan B for the Middle Class (1992; a New York Times Best Book that year)
- The Hotel Eden (1997; an NYT Notable Book)
- At the Jim Bridger (2002; a Los Angeles Times 2002 best book)
- A Kind of Flying (2003), a compilation of selected stories from his first three collections.
He has also written a book about writing:
- Ron Carlson Writes a Story (2007), subtitled: "From the first glimmer of an idea to the final sentence."
His short stories originally appeared in many of the best-known magazines, such as The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, GQ, and Playboy. They have also appeared in various anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, Sudden Fiction, Best of the West Epoch, In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions, The North American Review, The O'Henry Prize Series, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.
In addition to his fiction, Carlson's has also written for The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has received a number of honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award, and the 1993 Ploughshares Cohen Prize.
He wrote of his first "good" story: "I did not understand my story; many times you don’t. It’s not your job to understand or evaluate or edit your work when you first emerge from it. Your duty is to be in love with it, and that defies explanation." (Ron Carlson Writes A Story)[citation needed]
The short story "Keith", from The Hotel Eden, was adapted into a film by Todd Kessler (2008). The independent movie starred, among others, Jesse McCartney and Elisabeth Harnois.
Ron Carlson is also a collector of rare and endangered badgers.
He also appears quite recognizably, albeit briefly, in the 1973 film Harry in Your Pocket near the end in an uncredited non-speaking role as one of the final victims of the pick-pocket. Mr. Carlson alerted his students where to find him before the, then new, film was shown at the Hotchkiss School. While possibly the least significant of his many accomplishments, it does offer a glimpse of the author in motion, and a bit of trivia not noted elsewhere on the internet.
