Nancy Horan

Last updated
Nancy Horan
OccupationAuthor
NationalityAmerican
Genre Historical fiction
Notable awards James Fenimore Cooper Prize (2009)

Nancy Horan is an American author of historical fiction. Her works include Loving Frank , a novel about Mamah Borthwick and her relationship with American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, [1] and Under the Wide and Starry Sky, a novel about the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife. [2] Horan was awarded the 2009 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction by the Society of American Historians for Loving Frank. [3]

A former resident of Oak Park, Illinois, Horan was a middle school English teacher, a freelance journalist, and worked briefly in a public relations firm before moving to an island in Puget Sound, where she lives with her husband. [4] [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Erdrich</span> American author (born 1954)

Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Franzen</span> American writer

Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Powers</span> American novelist

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ford</span> American author

Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Fenimore Cooper</span> American writer (1789–1851)

James Fenimore Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonial and indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. He lived much of his boyhood and the last fifteen years of life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lorrie Moore</span> American fiction writer (born 1957)

Lorrie Moore is an American writer, critic, and essayist. She is best known for her short stories, some of which have won major awards. Since 1984, she has also taught creative writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mamah Borthwick</span> American translator (born 1869–1914)

Martha Bouton "Mamah" Borthwick was an American translator who had a romantic relationship with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, which ended when she was murdered. She and Wright were instrumental in bringing the ideas and writings of Swedish feminist Ellen Key to American audiences. Wright built his famous settlement called Taliesin in Wisconsin for her, in part, to shield her from aggressive reporters and the negative public sentiment surrounding their non-married status. Both had left their spouses and children in 1909 in order to live together and were the subject of relentless public censure. In 1914, a disturbed member of the staff at Taliesin suddenly went on a murder-suicide spree at the estate killing Borthwick, two of her children and others. Wright was away at the time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Baker (author)</span> American novelist (born 1958)

Kevin Baker is an American novelist, political commentator, and journalist.

The Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction, formerly known as the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, is a biennial award given for the best Historical American fiction by the Society of American Historians. It is awarded in the odd-numbered years.

<i>Loving Frank</i> 2007 American novel by Nancy Horan

Loving Frank is a 2007 American novel by Nancy Horan. It tells the story of Mamah Borthwick's illicit love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright and the public shame they experienced in early twentieth century America. It is a fictionalised account told from Borthwick's perspective, based on research conducted by Horan, and it is her debut novel. It depicts Borthwick’s life as it became intertwined with Wright's between the years of 1907 through 1914. By following the artistic aspirations and travels of the two main protagonists, the novel portrays the social mores of the times in the United States and Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Vaea</span> Mountain in Samoa, burial place of Robert Louis Stevenson

Mount Vaea is a 472 m summit overlooking Apia, the capital of Samoa located on the north central coast of Upolu island. The mountain is situated south about 3 km inland from Apia township and harbour. The settlement at the foothills on the northern side of the mountain is called Lalovaea.

Thomas Mullen is an American novelist.

Sarah Bartlett Churchwell is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century American literature and cultural history, especially the 1920s and 1930s. She has appeared on British television and radio and has been a judge for the Booker Prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. She is the director of the Being Human festival and the author of three books: The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe; Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby; and Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream. In April 2021, she was long listed for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

<i>The Spy</i> (Cooper novel)

The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground is a novel by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. His second novel, it was published in 1821 by Wiley & Halsted. The plot is set during the American Revolution and was inspired in part by the family friend John Jay. The Spy was successful and began Cooper's reputation as a popular and important American writer.

The Society of American Historians, founded in 1939, encourages and honors literary distinction in the writing of history and biography about American topics. The approximately 300 members include professional historians, independent scholars, journalists, film and documentary makers, novelists, poets, and biographers, all of whom were selected for membership based on the literary excellence as well as the intellectual strength of their writing or presentation of American history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Makkai</span> American novelist and short-story writer

Rebecca Makkai is an American novelist and short-story writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nautical fiction</span> Literary genre

Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.

Afloat and Ashore is a nautical fiction novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1844. Set in 1796–1804, the novel follows the maritime adventures of Miles Wallingford Jr., the son of wealthy New York landowners who chooses to go to sea after the death of his parents. The novel ends abruptly part way through, and is followed by what critic Harold D. Langely called a "necessary" sequel which resolves many thematic and plot elements. The novel is partially autobiographical, based in part on Cooper's own experiences as a sailor, and is his first full-length novel to fully employ a first-person narrative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romance (prose fiction)</span> Genre of novel

The type of romance considered here is mainly the genre of novel defined by the novelist Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", in contrast to mainstream novels which realistically depict the state of a society. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances, and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances". Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".

References

  1. Liesl Schillinger, "Notes on a Scandal", New York Times, September 23, 2007. Accessed April 9, 2014.
  2. Susann Cokal, "In Sickness and in Health: 'Under the Wide and Starry Sky,' by Nancy Horan", New York Times, January 17, 2014. Accessed April 9, 2014.
  3. The Society of American Historians. James Fenimore Cooper Prize: Past Winners Archived 2015-04-11 at the Wayback Machine . Accessed April 9, 2014.
  4. Kevin Nance, "Loving Robert Louis Stevenson", Chicago Tribune, January 24, 2014. Accessed April 9, 2014.
  5. Julia Keller, "Frankly, Nancy Horan followed her literary dream", Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2008. Accessed April 9, 2014.