“Writing
is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote
for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.”
– Kent Haruf
Born
in Pueblo, CO, on this date in 1943, Haruf finally broke through the barrier in
1984
with The Tie That Binds, not only
establishing his writing credentials but also earning him both a Whiting Award
and a Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation for excellence. His novel, Plainsong, a huge bestseller published in 1999, is considered one
of the best ever written about Western U.S. small town life. And
his last novel, Our Souls at Night, completed just before his death in
2014, was adapted into a popular film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.
The son of a Methodist minister,
Haruf first started writing in high school and further studied writing at
Nebraska Wesleyan University and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned
his MFA. All of his novels
are set in the fictional town of Holt, CO, based on the small Western plains’
town of Yuma, where he resided in the early 1980s.
“I write in a journal first, briefly,”
he said of his writing process. “Then
(I) read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then
rework what I wrote the day before.”
“You have to believe in yourself, despite the evidence.”
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