Larry Woiwode

Biography

Born in 1941, Larry Woiwode lived in Sykeston, North Dakota, until the age of eight, when his family moved to Illinois. He started writing in high school and continued to write throughout his college days at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He pursued his writing career in New York City, where his work appeared in The Atlantic, GQ, Harpers, Paris Review, Partisan Review, and other publications, including two dozen stories in The New Yorker. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, received the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 1995, for "Distinction in the Art of the Short Story," and has appeared in four volumes of Best American Short Stories. He has been awarded the Aga Khan Prize, the John Dos Passos Prize, the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a 1992 Rough Rider Award, and in 1995 was named poet laureate of North Dakota.

His books include What I'm Going To Do, I Think (his first novel, and recipient of the William Faulkner Foundation Award and A Notable Book Award from the American Library Association); Beyond the Bedroom Wall (a finalist for the National Book Award and Book Critics' Circle Award), Indian Affairs, Silent Passengers, Eventide, Neumiller Stories, Poppa John, Born Brothers, What I Think I Did (named a A Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, as five of his other books have been) and, most recently Aristocrat of the West: The Story of Harold Schafer.

He has served as Writer in Residence at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; was a full professor at the State University of New York, Binghamton, and was the director of its creative writing program. He has conducted writing seminars and workshops across the United States and abroad, including the C. S. Lewis Summer Seminars at Cambridge and U.S. State Department tours of the provinces of Canada and of Lithuania and Scandinavia.

Larry and his wife, Carole, moved back to North Dakota in 1978 and reside on their 160-acre farm near Mott in the southwestern corner of the state. He is currently teaching in the English department at Jamestown College.

Beyond the Bedroom Wall

This book was written in 1975 and was a finalist for the National Book Award and Book Critics' Circle Award, and for the Association of American Publishers Distinguished Book of Five Years for presentation to White House Library.

Beyond the Bedroom Wall explores the strong yet fragile fabric of family. The subtitle A Family Album is accurate in that it shows the evolving life of the Neumiller family of North Dakota and Illinois. It opens with the burial of the family patriarch, Martin Neumiller. It reveals the hard life that Martin and his wife Alpha lived and explores the emotional relationships of their five children. This is a unique look at the American family and its structure; examining how religion, faith, and the beauty and harshness of the Great Plains environment can affect individuals. The quest for people to find some sense of rootedness and spirituality is a driving force that affects every family and the nature of family interdependence. Woiwode's novel also looks at the effects that prejudices and emotional and spiritual restrictions existing on the plains in the early 1900s had on Martin and Alpha, and how they echo through the lives of future generations. It is a highly praised family saga---frank, poetic, gripping, and tragic.

Other Books by Larry Woiwode

Acts. Harpercollins, 1993.

The Aristocrat of the West: Biography of Harold Schafer. North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 2002.

Born Brothers. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.

Even Tide. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.

Indian Affairs. Atheneum, 1992.

My Dinner With Auden. Basic Books, 2006.

The Neumiller Stories. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.

Poppa John. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981.

A Sacrifice of Praise. Cumberland House Publishing, 2nd . ed. 2006.

Silent Passengers: Stories. Atheneum, 1993.

What I Think I Did. Basic Books, 2001.

What I'm Going to Do, I Think. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969; rep., Avon , 1984.

Website Links:

New Hampshire Writers Project Write-Up of Woiwode

Woiwode's Rough Rider Award

Dickinson State University Webpage Devoted to Woiwode