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Ron Hansen | |
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| Born | December 8, 1947 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Education | Creighton University Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA) Santa Clara University (MA) |
| Genre | Fiction |
Ron Hansen (born December 8, 1947) is an American novelist, essayist, and professor. [1] He is known for writing literary westerns exploring the people and history of the American heartland, notably The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983), which was adapted into an acclaimed film. [2]
Ron Hansen was born in Omaha, Nebraska and reared as Catholic. [3] He attended a Jesuit high school, Creighton Preparatory School, and earned a Bachelor's degree in English from Creighton University in Omaha in 1970. [4]
Following military service, he earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974 and held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship at Stanford University. He later earned an M.A. in Spirituality from Santa Clara University.
Hansen is the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. [3] He is married to the writer Bo Caldwell.
In January 2007, Hansen was ordained as a permanent deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. [4]
In May 2009, Hansen was inducted to the college of fellows at Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology.
Hansen has received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, as well as an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. [5]
Hansen frequently writes novels about the Old West, mixing history with morality and drama. Hansen's first novel, Desperadoes (1979), reimagines the story of the Dalton Gang. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , a 1983 novel chronicling the life and death of the iconic outlaw, was Hansen's most popular work. [6] It also brought him wide critical acclaim, and was nominated to the short list for the PEN/Faulkner Award. [7] The novel was adapted into the 2007 film of the same name, for which Hansen was an advisor for the dialogue and an actor in a cameo role as a frontier reporter. [8]
Catholic themes of love, redemption and resurrection recur in Hansen's novels and stories. Mariette in Ecstasy (1991), his novel of the faith and religious experience in the context of a cloistered Catholic nun who apparently bears the stigmata, earned him near universal critical praise. He won the fiction prize from the Bay Area Reviewers Association and the Gold Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. Hansen's novel, Exiles (2008), tells in parallel the story of the shipwreck of the SS Deutschland, which cost the lives of five young nuns, and the story of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who was inspired by the tragedy to write The Wreck of the Deutschland .
Hansen's 1996 novel, Atticus , about the bond of love between a father and a son who has died under mysterious circumstances in a dusty Mexican town, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. [9] [10] Hitler's Niece (1999) is a historical novel that offers a view of Hitler as seen through the eyes of Geli Raubal, the daughter of his half-sister. Isn't It Romantic? (2003) is a comic novel about two sophisticated Parisians stranded in small-town Nebraska.
Hansen has published numerous short stories in literary magazines nationwide. His short story collection, Nebraska, was published in 1989. Hansen also edited the anthology You Don't Know What Love Is: Contemporary American Stories (1987) and co-edited with Jim Shepard You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe (1994).
In addition to his novels and short stories, Hansen has published a compilation of essays on faith and fiction (A Stay Against Confusion) and a children's book (The Shadowmaker). Hansen also wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film adaptation of Mariette in Ecstasy.
In 2016, Hansen wrote about the life of Billy the Kid in a novel titled simply The Kid .
Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
Michael Cunningham is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living Americans, Green Card holders or permanent residents. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Judges read citations for each of the finalists' works at the presentation ceremony in Washington, D.C.. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981.
James Arnold Horowitz, better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a 2007 American epic revisionist Western film written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Based on Ron Hansen's 1983 novel of the same name, the film dramatizes the relationship between Jesse James and Robert Ford, focusing on the events that lead up to the titular killing. It stars Brad Pitt as James and Casey Affleck as Ford, with Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Paul Schneider, Jeremy Renner, Zooey Deschanel, and Sam Rockwell in supporting roles.
Bess Streeter Aldrich was an American author.
Robert Newton Ford was an American outlaw who killed fellow outlaw Jesse James on April 3, 1882. He and his brother Charley, both members of the James–Younger Gang under James's leadership, went on to perform paid re-enactments of the killing at publicity events. Ford would spend his later years operating multiple saloons and dance halls in the West.
Ron Rash is an American poet, short story writer and novelist and the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University.
Atticus Lish is an American novelist. His debut, Preparation for the Next Life, caught its independent publisher, Tyrant, "off guard" by becoming a surprise success, winning a number of awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Lish lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with his wife. He is the son of influential literary editor Gordon Lish.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
The PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award honors "excellence in the art of the short story". It is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors. The award was first given in 1988.
The 6th San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards, honoring the best in film for 2007, were given on 10 December 2007.
Charles Wilson Ford was an outlaw, and member of the James Gang. He was the lesser known brother of Robert Ford, the killer of Jesse James. Charlie Ford was introduced to Jesse and Frank James by Wood Hite and he joined the gang.
Jim Shepard is an American novelist and short story writer, who teaches creative writing and film at Williams College.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a 1983 historical novel by American writer Ron Hansen. It explores the life and times of Jesse James and his gang, and his death at the hands of Robert Ford.
The True Story of Jesse James is a 1957 American Western drama film adapted from Henry King's 1939 film Jesse James, which was only loosely based on James' life. It was directed by Nicholas Ray, with Robert Wagner portraying Jesse James and Jeffrey Hunter starring as Frank James. Filming took place during 1955. Originally titled The James Brothers in the United Kingdom, the film focused on the relationship between the two James brothers during the last 18 years of Jesse James' life.
Atticus is a murder-mystery novel written by Ron Hansen in 1996. The main character, Atticus Cody, is similar to Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird.
James H. Timberlake was an American law enforcement officer, Civil War soldier, farmer and rancher who served as a deputy U.S. marshal for the Western District of Missouri. Timberlake is best known for being the chief enforcer and investigator against the James-Younger Gang, beginning in the 1870s, which culminated in the death of the outlaw Jesse James on April 3, 1882, at the hands of Robert Ford.
"Jesse James" is a 19th-century American folk song about the outlaw of the same name, first recorded by Bentley Ball in 1919 and subsequently by many others, including Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Vernon Dalhart, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, The Pogues, The Ramblin' Riversiders, The Country Gentlemen, Willy DeVille, Van Morrison, Harry McClintock, Grandpa Jones, Bob Seger, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Carl Sandburg, Sons of the Pioneers, Johnny Cash, Liam Clancy, Mungo Jerry and Bruce Springsteen. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
Mariette in Ecstasy is a 1991 novel written by Ron Hansen. it is set in a convent in New York in 1906. It is defined as a "wonderful and strange novel" and it is "beautifully described".
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