Lisa Dale Norton

Last updated
Lisa Dale Norton
Born (1956-07-08) July 8, 1956 (age 65)
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater University of Iowa
GenreFiction

Lisa Dale Norton (born July 8, 1956) is an American author best known as a writer of literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction. She is the great-niece of Evelyn Maurine Norton Lincoln, U.S. President John F. Kennedy's personal secretary. [1] Norton makes her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [2]

Contents

Early life

Norton grew up in Osceola, Nebraska, [3] the daughter of Judge William Hayden Norton and Nancy Rogers Sayre Norton. Her father was a prominent member of the Democratic Party in that state, grandson of Congressman John Nathaniel Norton, [4] and nephew to Evelyn Norton Lincoln, John F. Kennedy’s personal secretary from his years in the Senate to his assassination in Dallas. Lisa’s mother was a gifted artist and newspaper editor. Restless and a non-conformist, she presented her two children with a broad palette of ideas and the freedom to explore them. [5] The combination of political connections and free-thinking home life nurtured an environment of possibility that led Norton from the public schools in Osceola to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where she earned a B.A. degree. Norton completed her M.A. at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, which she attended before the development of a university nonfiction writing program. Norton submitted a creative thesis, a work of literary journalism, in the School of Mass Communications and Journalism. That piece of writing—One Horse Town—became the genesis of her book Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills (Picador USA/St. Martin’s Press). [6]

Career

Norton taught at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, from 1988-1993. [7] During the 1990s, she lived on the Oregon coast where she founded and directed Neahkahnie Institute, an arts organization that offered writing workshops exploring landscape and creativity. [6] The 1996 publication of her book Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills established Norton as a new and respected literary writer [8] and a voice for environmental reform on the Great Plains of America by combining the genres of personal narrative and nature writing to issue a plea for conscious use of the waters of the Ogallala Aquifer. [9] Norton’s experience writing Hawk Flies Above led her to an investigation of the process involved in creating compelling narratives from life experience. [10] In 2003 she joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles Extension Writers’ Program teaching creative nonfiction and memoir classes. This work led Norton to distill the essence of memoir Memoir writing. [11] In 2008, Griffin/St. Martin’s Press published Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir. At that time Norton began blogging for The Huffington Post as author and story expert. Her interest involves connections between the nature and influence of narrative and contemporary culture. [11] Norton speaks nationally about the art and craft of writing stories and the power of narrative. [12]

Works authored

Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills (1996/1997) Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir (2008)

Related Research Articles

Creative nonfiction Genre of writing

Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as academic or technical writing or journalism, which are also rooted in accurate fact though not written to entertain based on prose style. Many writers view creative nonfiction as overlapping with the essay.

Eavan Boland Irish poet, author, and professor

Eavan Aisling Boland was an Irish poet, author, and professor. She was a professor at Stanford University, where she had taught from 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland's poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

Jim Harrison American poet, novelist, and essayist (1937 – 2016)

James Harrison was an American poet, novelist, and essayist. He was a prolific and versatile writer publishing over three dozen books in several genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, and memoir. He wrote screenplays, book reviews, literary criticism, and published essays on food, travel, and sport. Harrison indicated that, of all his writing, his poetry meant the most to him. He published 24 novellas during his lifetime and is considered "America’s foremost master" of that form. His first commercial success came with the 1979 publication of the trilogy of novellas, Legends of the Fall, two of which were made into movies. Harrison's work has been translated into multiple languages including Spanish, French, Greek, Chinese, and Russian. He was the recipient of multiple awards and honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969), the Mark Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature (1990), and induction into the American Academy of Arts & Letters (2007). Harrison wrote that "The dream that I could write a good poem, a good novel, or even a good movie for that matter, has devoured my life."

Mark Doty American poet and memoirist

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

Glenway Wescott was an American poet, novelist and essayist. A figure of the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s, Wescott was openly gay. His relationship with longtime companion Monroe Wheeler lasted from 1919 until Wescott's death.

Dodie Bellamy is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book, Cunt-Ups (2001) won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrative movement in San Francisco and fellow writers Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, Kevin Killian, and Eileen Myles.

Joy Harjo American Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She is the incumbent United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She is also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to serve three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

Ann Hood

Ann Hood is an American novelist and short story writer; she has also written nonfiction. The author of fourteen novels, four memoirs, a short story collection, a ten book series for middle readers and one young adult novel. Her essays and short stories have appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares,, and Tin House. Hood is a regular contributor to The New York Times' Op-Ed page, Home Economics column. Her most recent work is "Kitchen Yarns," published with W.W. Norton and Company in early 2019.

Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.

Terese Svoboda

Terese Svoboda is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, librettist, translator, biographer, critic and videomaker.

Hualing Nieh Engle, née Nieh Hua-ling, is a Chinese novelist, fiction writer, and poet. She is a professor emerita at the University of Iowa.

Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (2010), and the essay collections, Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).

Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader is an American author, poet, performer, English professor at Mills College and co-founder of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). She is of Lebanese descent. In 2000, she received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams....

Leila Philip is an American writer, poet and educator. She is the author of three books of memoir and narrative non-fiction and one collection of poetry. Philip has been anthologized in a number of books, including: Brief Encounters, Teaching Creative Non-Fiction, Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers; Family Travels: The Farther You Go the Closer You Get; Japan: True Stories of Life on the Road, A Woman's Passion for Travel. She has contributed articles and reviews to newspapers, magazines, research and journals including Ploughshares, The Christian Science Monitor, Studio Potter Magazine, the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Daily Yomiuri. Philip has written about art for Artcritical, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas and Art in America. She is the Contributing Editor of Riverteeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is a Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and public speaker, whose name at birth was Mildred Mary Nana-Ama Boakyewaa Brobby. She is best known for her 1998 memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression.

Amy Butcher

Amy Butcher is an American writer and essayist. Her memoir, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, was published in 2015. Her second book, Mothertrucker, is forthcoming from Amazon Publishing literary press Little A Books in 2022. In August 2019, Makeready Films announced a film adaptation of Mothertrucker will be produced and directed by Jill Soloway and will star Julianne Moore. In February 2020, the Ohio State Arts Council awarded excerpts of Mothertrucker an Individual Excellence Award.

Sonja Livingston is an American essayist and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She has also taught at the University of Memphis and the University of New Orleans Writing Programs in Edinburgh, Cork (city), and San Miguel de Allende.

Jennifer Sinor

Jennifer Ann Sinor is an American author and literary nonfiction writer and professor. She primarily writes memoir, research-based creative nonfiction, and personal essays that experiment with non-linear forms. Sinor's work focuses on the body, the ineffable, and the ordinary in our lives. It is often non-linear in form and relies on association, juxtaposition, and speculative leaps.

Lacy M. Johnson

Lacy M. Johnson is an American writer, professor and activist. She is the author of Trespasses: A Memoir, The Other Side: A Memoir and The Reckonings: Essays.

Doris Brett is an Australian writer and clinical psychologist. She has written in a number of genres, including poetry, memoir and nonfiction.

References

  1. ↑ “JFK Secretary Evelyn Lincoln Dies at 85.” The Washington Post, May 13, 1995.
  2. ↑ Steinberg, David. “Everyone's Memoir Gets 15 Minutes,” Albuquerque Sunday Journal, August 12, 2008.
  3. ↑ Bartels, Alan J. “Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir,” Nebraska Life, July/August 2009, page 53.
  4. ↑ Norton, Lisa Dale. Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 1996, page 10.
  5. ↑ Norton (1996), pages 3-56.
  6. 1 2 Heltzel, Ellen Emry. “Finding a Purpose and a Literary Voice,” The Sunday Oregonian, January 19, 1997.
  7. ↑ Norton (1996), page 218.
  8. ↑ “Hawk Flies Above.” Publishers Weekly, August 26, 1996.
  9. ↑ “Hawk Flies Above.” Kirkus Reviews, August 7, 1996.
  10. ↑ Norton, Lisa Dale. Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2008, pages xix-xxii.
  11. 1 2 Versace, Candelora. Pasatiempo Magazine, The New Mexican, Santa Fe, August 8, 2008.
  12. ↑ Norton (2008), pages 113-116.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.