Chris Crutcher | |
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| Born | July 17, 1946 Dayton, Ohio, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | Eastern Washington State College (BA) |
| Period | 1983–present |
| Genre | Young Adult novels, short stories |
| Notable awards | Margaret A. Edwards Award 2000 |
| Website | |
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Chris Crutcher (born July 17, 1946) is an American novelist and a family therapist. He received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2000 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.
Crutcher was born July 17, 1946, to a World War II B17 bomber pilot and a homemaker in Dayton, Ohio. [1] [2] [3] A few weeks after his birth, his father gave up flying and the family moved to his mother's hometown of Cascade, Idaho, where his father could open an oil and gas wholesale business and he could grow up. [3] [4]
After graduating from high school, Crutcher attended Eastern Washington State College (now Eastern Washington University) where he swam competitively and earned a BA in psychology and sociology. [3] With no post-graduation plans or prospects, he went back to Eastern and got a teaching certificate. [5]
Crutcher taught at several primary and secondary schools in California and Washington before beginning his writing career. [3] After his first book was completed, he joined Spokane's Child Protection Team and began practicing as a child and family therapist. [3] [6] [7]
Crutcher's debut novel was Running Loose in 1983 about a senior in high school who has it all until life throws him for a few loops. Many of his novels concern teenaged athletes who have personal problems. Most of his protagonists are male, teenage athletes, often swimmers, and recurring supporting characters include a wise Asian-American teacher or coach and a caring journalism teacher.
Chris Crutcher's writing is controversial, and has been frequently challenged [8] and even banned [9] [10] by individuals who want to censor his books by removing them from libraries and classrooms. Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories and Running Loose were #63 and #92 on the ALA list of 100 books most frequently challenged during the 1990s. [11] His books generally feature teens coping with serious problems, including abusive parents, racial and religious prejudice, mental and physical disability, and poverty; these themes are viewed by some as too mature for children. Other cited reasons for censorship include strong language and depictions of homosexuality. [12] Despite this controversy, Crutcher's writing has received many awards.
Crutcher has also written an autobiography called King of the Mild Frontier (2003), an adult novel titled The Deep End (1991), and two collections of short stories, Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories (1991) and Angry Management (2009), some of which further explore characters from his previous novels. One of the stories from Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories, "A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune", was made into a film called Angus .
The ALA Margaret Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature" and "helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world." Crutcher won the annual award in 2000 when the panel cited six books published from 1983 to 1993: Running Loose, Stotan!, The Crazy Horse Electric Game, Chinese Handcuffs, Athletic Shorts, and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (‡). All were edited by Susan Hirschman at Greenwillow Books. The panel chair observed that "[h]is stories bring to life the contemporary teen world, including its darker side. Sarah Byrnes suffers facial deformity caused by her father's deliberate cruelty. Jennifer Lawless dreads the nights her stepfather forces his sexual advances on her. ... Crutcher takes teenagers seriously and cares about them." [13]
The ALA has named eight of his books to the annual list of "Best Books for Young Adults".
Susan Mary Cooper is an English author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as the Arthurian legends and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council. In 2024, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
Francesca Lia Block is an American writer of adult and young-adult literature. She is known for the Weetzie Bat series, which she began while a student at UC Berkeley.
Robert Edmund Cormier was an American writer and journalist, known for his deeply pessimistic novels, many of which were written for young adults. Recurring themes include abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal, and conspiracy. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win.
Laurie Halse Anderson is an American writer, known for children's and young adult novels. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for her contribution to young adult literature and 2023 she received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
The Michael L. Printz Award is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". It is sponsored by Booklist magazine; administered by the ALA's young-adult division, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA); and named for the Topeka, Kansas, school librarian Mike Printz, a long-time active member of YALSA. Up to four worthy runners-up may be designated Honor Books and three or four have been named every year.
James John Patrick Murphy was an American author. He wrote more than 35 nonfiction and fiction books for children, young adults, and general audiences, including more than 30 about American history. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for his contribution in writing for teens.
Aidan Chambers is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.
Richard Wayne Peck was an American novelist known for his contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2001 for his novel A Year Down Yonder. He received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1990.
Walter Dean Myers was an American writer of children's books best known for young adult literature. He was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but was raised in Harlem, New York City. A tough childhood led him to writing and his school teachers would encourage him in this habit as a way to express himself. He wrote more than one hundred books including picture books and nonfiction. He won the Coretta Scott King Award for African-American authors five times. His 1988 novel Fallen Angels is one of the books most frequently challenged in the U.S. because of its adult language and its realistic depiction of the Vietnam War.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. Her novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction. She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
ALAN, The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents is a teachers organization in the United States, an independent assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Founded in November 1973, ALAN is made up of teachers, authors, librarians, publishers, teacher-educators and their students, and others who are particularly interested in the area of young adult literature. ALAN, which is self-governing, holds its annual meetings during the NCTE annual convention in November and also publishes The ALAN Review.
Marilyn Singer is an author of children's books in a wide variety of genres, including fiction and non-fiction picture books, juvenile novels and mysteries, young adult fantasies, and poetry. Some of her poems are written as reverso poems.
Sharon Mills Draper is an American children's writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun,Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), established in 1957, is a division of the American Library Association. YALSA is a national association of librarians, library workers and advocates whose mission is to expand the capacity of libraries to better serve teens. YALSA administers several awards and sponsors an annual Young Adult Literature Symposium, Teen Read Week, the third week of each October, and Teen Tech Week, the second week of each March. YALSA currently has over 5,200 members. YALSA aims to expand and strengthen library services for teens through advocacy, research, professional development and events.
Ironman is a 1995 novel by young adult writer Chris Crutcher who studied art and literature at the University of Notre Dame in his twenties. He created the novel's cover image himself using the medium of oil pastel.
The Margaret A. Edwards Award is an American Library Association (ALA) literary award that annually recognizes an author and "a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". It is named after Margaret A. Edwards (1902–1988), the pioneer, longtime director of young adult services at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories is a young adult fiction short story collection by Chris Crutcher. Most of the stories are related to Crutcher's early work and often come from his experience as a family counselor. This book also contains the short story "A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune" which first appeared in Connections, edited by Donald R. Gallo, published in 1989 by Delacorte Press. It was adapted into the film Angus. The novel has been met with challenges from school districts due to the book's inclusion of offensive language, homosexuality, and sexual content, and was the fourth most challenged book in 2006.
Matthew de la Peña is an American writer of children's books who specializes in novels for young adults. He won the Newbery Medal in 2016 for his book Last Stop on Market Street.
The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) is a national section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) committed to bringing books and children together.
Tanya Lee Stone is an American author of children's and young adult books. She writes narrative nonfiction for middle-grade students and young adults, as well as nonfiction picture books. Her stories often center women and people of color.
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