Robert Olen Butler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Olen Butler is a fiction writer who has written novels and short story collections. He resides in Tallahassee, Florida, where he teaches at Florida State University. He has published ten novels and four volumes of short fiction, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992).
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[edit] Biography
Butler was born January 20, 1945, in Granite City, Illinois. He attended Northwestern University as a theater major (B.S., 1967) and switched to playwriting at the University of Iowa (M.A., 1969). In 1972 he married poet Marylin Geller and they have one child. After the usual collection of odd jobs, including steel mill labor, taxi driving, and substitute teaching in high schools, Butler joined Fairfield Publications and worked on such trade publications as Electronic News. He became editor-in-chief of Energy User News in 1975.
Butler's participation in the U.S. military brought him to Vietnam from 1969-1971, first as a counter-intelligence special agent for the Army and later as a translator. He rose to the rank of sergeant in the Army Military Intelligence. His experiences during those years inform much of his fiction. In 1987, he was awarded the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award by the Vietnam Veterans of America for outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.
His stories have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and Zoetrope. He has had stories included in editions of The Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and numerous college literature textbooks. Butler has also written feature-length screenplays and is the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Butler is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2001 he won a National Magazine Award in Fiction. He is married to novelist and playwright Elizabeth Dewberry.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novels
- The Alleys of Eden (1981), ISBN 0-8180-0631-5
- Sun Dogs (1982), ISBN 0-8180-0636-6
- Countrymen of Bones (1983), ISBN 0-8180-0639-0
- On Distant Ground (1985), ISBN 0-394-54040-9
- Wabash (1987), ISBN 0-394-55597-X
- The Deuce (1989), ISBN 0-671-67093-X
- They Whisper (1994), ISBN 0-8050-1985-5
- The Deep Green Sea (1997), ISBN 0-8050-3130-8
- Mr. Spaceman (2000), ISBN 0-8021-1660-4
- Fair Warning (2002), ISBN 0-87113-833-6
[edit] Short story collections
- A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), ISBN 0-8050-1986-3
- Tabloid Dreams (1996), ISBN 0-8050-3131-6
- Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards (2004), ISBN 0-8021-1777-5
- Mots de tête (2005), ISBN 2-7436-1392-0 [French edition, and first publication in book form, of Severance (see next)]
- Severance (2006), ISBN 0-8118-5614-3
[edit] Non-fiction
[edit] Other publications
- "Introduction" to Vietnam War Literature: A Catalogue (1990), ISBN none
- The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2004 (2005), ISBN 0-9748229-5-7
- The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2005 (2006), ISBN 0-9748229-8-1
