Ohio
Click an author to read a biographical essay prepared by a local student.
|
By Claudia Matherly Stolz
Edited by Patricia Penrose
What is high in the middle and rounded on both ends? Why, Ohio, of course! Corny? Definitely! We still have lots of corn and other items agricultural. Homegrown is a byword for us in crops, livestock or even writers. Novelists, poets and playwrights in all shapes and sizes, from Nobel laureates to television screenwriters have sprung from Ohio's fertile soil.
Award Winning Authors
Toni Morrison , winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1993), set her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved, as well as Sula , in Ohio. In addition to many other novels, she has also contributed to modern literary criticism. Other Pulitzer Prize-winning writers include poets Mary Oliver and Richard Howard; playwrights Russell Crouse (1946), Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence for their play, Inherit the Wind; short story writer Louis Bromfield (Early Autumn, 1926) and journalist Anne O'Hare McCormick.Ohio is well represented in the fields of other prestigious awards: The National Book Award went to poet and critic, John Crowe Ransom; while poets Nikki Giovanni and Stephanie Tolan and Merril Gilfillan, Jr. (Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains) were runners-up. In children's literature Virginia Hamilton (M.C. Higgins, the Great; The Planet of Junior Brown; Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush; The People Could Fly; and Creation Myths from Around the World) has received almost every national and international award that publishing has to offer: The Hans Christian Anderson (considered the Nobel of children's literature), John Newbery Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Boston Globe/ HornBook Award, and Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (1994). The last award mentioned is given every three years to an author/illustrator who has made a lasting and substantial contribution to children's literature. Other Newbery honorees include Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting and Kneeknock Rise), Lois Lenski (Strawberry Girl, 1946), Cynthia Ryland ( Missing May, 1993), Mildred Taylor (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, 1977), Carolyn Treffinger (Li Lun, Lad of Courage) and Marion and Walter Havinghurst (Pines: A Story of Norwegian Lumbering in Wisconsin).
The Caldecott, awarded to outstanding illustrations for children, has gone to Robert McCloskey (Make Way for Ducklings) and Evaline Ness (Tom Tit Tot). Other Ohioans writing for young people include R.L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Stephanie Tolan (The Face in the Mirror).
Ohio has produced many noteworthy poets:
Rita Dove (The Darker Face of the Earth), a poet laureate of the United States; Hart Crane, Arnold Adoff, James A. Wright and Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American to achieve prominence in this field. His work is currently performed by Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin, a contemporary poet who travels in the guise of Dunbar, giving dramatic readings.William Dean Howells (A Modern Instance, 1882 and The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885) was a printer, a newspaperman and later editor of the Atlantic Monthly. His contributions to American literature and letters are wide-ranging, helping to spur the shift from Romanticism to Realism.Another Realist, Charles Waddell Chestnutt (The Conjure Woman, 1899 and The House Behind the Cedars, 1900) focused on biracial individuals living in the North. He also wrote one of the standard biographies of Frederick Douglass, one of the foremost black abolitionists in the nation's history.
In addition, Ohio has produced a number of writers who are either well known for a particular work or who have helped define the genre within which they wrote. Abraham Lincoln once called Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin) "the little lady who started the big war."
Ambrose Bierce (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) was a master of the short story. His collection, the macabre Can Such Things Be? (1893) focused on the supernatural and may not be ideal bed-time reading. William Sidney Porter, better known as O Henry, wrote many well-loved short stories including the touching The Gift of the Magi. Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), considered one of the best American fiction writers of his generation, wrote about small town life in Winesburg, Ohio. Zane Grey, in the eyes of many the father of the western, wrote sixty-nine novels about the West; Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) is a classic. James Thurber (Lanterns and Lances) gave us a wry but howlingly funny look at the relationship between men and women. Journalism is well represented by Gloria Steinem (MS magazine), Lowell Thomas and Earl Wilson. Comic strips owe much to Milton Canniff who created the definitive Steve Canyon.The crop of Ohio's historians is a bumper one. Writing both history and historical fiction, the state's native sons include Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., James P. Barry, Walter Havighurst, Henry Howe, Geoffrey Ward, Francis Weisenburger and Allan Eckert.
The future is well represented also. The science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold (Borders of Infinity ), Harlan Ellison (Vic and Blood), Andre Norton (Three Against the Witch), and Roger Zelazny (The Guns of Avalon) have pushed the boundaries of speculation into new worlds.
Mystery writers have found Ohio to be fertile soil for their craft. Earl Derr Biggers achieved fame with his famous Chinese detective Charlie Chan (The House without a Key, 1925); the series also ran in comic strips, movies and on television. Currently writing in this genre are James Martin, Elizabeth George and Kate Wilhem.
Other writers include John Jakes ( North and South, The Kent Family Chronicles); Rob Forman; Phillip O'Connor; Jack Matthews; Dawn Powell; James Purdey; Charles Allen Smart; Albion W. Tourgee; Edmond White, a Book Critics Award winner; Ben Ames Williams; and Carrie Young. These are some of the writers who have flourished in Ohio's soil; there are more and you are encouraged to find them. E-mail us as you discover writers in your area. Include a sentence or two explaining the reasons why the writer should be added to the list. Your teacher will be notified if your choice makes the cut.
Claudia Matherly Stolz teaches at Indiana University East in Indiana.
Patricia Penrose teaches at Nogales High School in California.