Stewart O'Nan

Infobox Writer


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name = Stewart O'Nan
caption =
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birthdate = Birth date and age|1961|2|4|mf=y
birthplace = Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Novelist
nationality = United States
period = 1993 - present
genre = Literary fiction, horror fiction
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website = http://www.stewart-onan.com/

Stewart O'Nan (born February 4, 1961) is an American novelist.

Life and work

Born on February 4, 1961 to John Lee O'Nan and Mary Ann O'Nan, née Smith. He and his brother were raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He earned his B.S. at Boston University in 1983. While in Boston, O'Nan became a fan of the Red Sox. On October 27, 1984, he married Trudy Anne Southwick, his high school sweetheart. They moved to Long Island, New York, and he went to work for Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, New York, as a test engineer from 1984 to 1988.

Encouraged by his wife to pursue a career in writing, they moved to Ithaca, New York, and O'Nan returned to college and graduated with his M.F.A. from Cornell University in 1992. He and his family moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, and taught at the University of Central Oklahoma and the University of New Mexico.

O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, "In the Walled City", was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. [cite web|url=http://www.upress.pitt.edu/renderHtmlPage.aspx?srcHtml=htmlSourceFiles/drueheinz.htm#1|date=2007|accessdate=2007-03-29|title=Drue Heinz Literature Prize|work=University of Pittsburgh Press] The same year, he was able to find a publisher for his second book, and first novel, "Snow Angels"—based on the story "Finding Amy" from "In the Walled City"—when the manuscript earned him the first Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel, awarded by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans. [cite web|url=http://www.thefaulknersociety.org/guidelines.html|date=2006|accessdate=2007-03-29|title=About the Competition: History of Success|work=The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, Inc.] In 2007 "Snow Angels" was adapted for a film of the same title, directed by David Gordon Green, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.

In 1995 he and his family moved to Avon, Connecticut. He was a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing at Trinity College in nearby Hartford until 1997. The research he did for his novel "The Names of the Dead" led to the creation of a class that studied Vietnam War memoirs as a form of literature, which he also initially taught. In 1996, Granta named him one of America's Best Young Novelists. [cite web|url=http://www.granta.com/|title=Granta 54: Best of Young American Novelists|work=Granta]

In a 2002 article, "Finding Time to Write", he wrote:

"Very simple things like keeping the manuscript with you at all times. Always keep it with you. That way you can always go back to it. Doesn't have to be the whole manuscript. Another way to do this is to bring only the very last sentence that you worked on--where you left off, basically. Bring it with you on a sheet of paper or index card. Keep it on your person so that if you're running around the building where you're working, you take that five seconds to pull it out and look at it and say, "Okay, oh, maybe I'll do this with it. Maybe I'll do something else with it. Maybe I'll fix it there." [cite web |url= http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=ITOF&docId=A85011234&source=gale&srcprod=ITOF&userGroupName=22510&version=1.0|title= "Finding Time to Write"|accessdate=2007-08-15 |format= Article|work=Nieman Reports 56.1 (Spring 2002):p 17(2)|Author=Stewart O'Nan ]

When he researched "The Circus Fire", he advertised in "The Hartford Courant" and received more than 500 answers to his request for interviews with survivors of the Hartford Circus fire.Fact|date=August 2007

In the spring of 2005 O'Nan spoke at the Lucy Robbins Welles Library in Newington, Connecticut, as the featured author in their One Book 4 Towns program. When asked about "", the book he co-authored with Stephen King, O'Nan replied, "Who would have thought that writing a book about the Red Sox would be the luckiest thing I ever did in my life."Fact|date=August 2007

In 2008, Lonely Road Books sold out their pre-orders for O'Nan's latest writing, a screenplay simply titled "Poe". It is a dramatic retelling of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. The screenplay was released as a limited edition of 200 copies and as a lettered edition of 26 copies. It features a foreword by Roger Corman, and frontispieces by Jill Bauman.

Works

tory collections

*"In the Walled City" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993)

Novels

*"Transmission" (Arjuna Library, 1987)
*"Snow Angels" (Doubleday, 1994)
*"The Names of the Dead" (Doubleday, 1996)
*"The Speed Queen" (Doubleday, 1997)
*"A World Away" (Henry Holt, 1998)
*"A Prayer for the Dying" (Henry Holt, 1999)
*"Everyday People" (Grove Press, 2001)
*"Wish You Were Here" (Grove Press, 2002)
*"The Night Country" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003)
*"The Good Wife" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005)
*"Last Night at the Lobster" (Viking, 2007)
*"Songs for the Missing" (Viking, October 2008)

creenplays

*"Poe" (Lonely Road Books, 2008)

Nonfiction

*"The Circus Fire" (Doubleday, 2000)
*"" (with Stephen King) (Scribner, 2004)

As editor

*"On Writers and Writing" by John Gardner (Addison-Wesley, 1994)
*"The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War" (Anchor Books, 1998)

External links

* [http://www.stewart-onan.com/ Official Website: The Works of Stewart O'Nan]
* [http://www.beatrice.com/interviews/onan/ 1997 Interview by Ron Hogan] from "Beatrice"
* [http://bostonreview.net/BR24.5/onan.html "The Lost World of Richard Yates: How the great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print"] an essay by O'Nan in Boston Review
*imdb name|1099111|Stewart O'Nan

References

Persondata
NAME=O'Nan, Stewart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Novelist
DATE OF BIRTH=February 4, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=