Stephen Harrigan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1948 (age 70–71) Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Novelist, screenwriter |
| Notable awards | Spur Award James Fenimore Cooper Award |
Stephen Harrigan (born 1948) is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of the bestselling The Gates of the Alamo, for other novels such as Remember Ben Clayton and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, and for his magazine work in Texas Monthly.
He was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 as Michael Stephen McLaughlin, the second son of Marjorie Berney McLaughlin, an Army nurse, and of James Erwin McLaughlin, a decorated fighter pilot in World War II who was killed in a plane crash on Mt. Pilchuck northeast of Seattle six months before Harrigan was born. [1] When he was five, his mother married Tom Harrigan, a Texas-based independent oilman. The family moved to Abilene, and then to Corpus Christi. Stephen Harrigan graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1971 and—after several years working as a yardman—began writing for the newly established magazine Texas Monthly and launched his career as a freelance writer. His articles and essays have appeared there and in a wide variety of other magazines, including Outside, Esquire, The New York Times Book Review, National Geographic,American History, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate.
Oklahoma City, often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, the city ranks 27th among United States cities in population. The population grew following the 2010 Census, with the population estimated to have increased to 649,021 as of July 2018. The Oklahoma City metropolitan area had a population of 1,396,445, and the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area had a population of 1,469,124 residents, making it Oklahoma's largest municipality and metropolitan area by population.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
Mount Pilchuck is a mountain located in Snohomish County, Washington. It is 57 miles (92 km) northeast of Seattle. It is part of the Cascade Range.
Harrigan's novel, The Gates of the Alamo, published in 2000, was a New York Times bestseller and the recipient of a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West from the Western Writers of America. His 2011 novel Remember Ben Clayton also won the Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for best historical novel. His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, a work of fiction centering on Abraham Lincoln's early career as a lawyer and state legislator in Springfield, Illinois. A starred review in Publishers Weekly hailed the book as “superb” [2] and, in the judgment of Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, it is “historical fiction at its very best.” [3] He has recently finished a sweeping history of Texas, from prehistory to the present, entitled "Big Wonderful Thing". It is already a bestseller on Amazon.
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 Western and American Indian art works and artifacts. The facility also has the world's most extensive collection of American rodeo photographs, barbed wire, saddlery, and early rodeo trophies. Museum collections focus on preserving and interpreting the heritage of the American West. The museum becomes an art gallery during the annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale each June. The Prix de West Artists sell original works of art as a fund raiser for the Museum. The expansion and renovation was designed by Curtis W. Fentress, FAIA, RIBA of Fentress Architects.
Western Writers of America, founded 1953, promotes literature, both fictional and non-fictional, pertaining to the American West. Although its founders wrote traditional western fiction, the more than six hundred current members also include historians and other non-fiction writers as well as authors from other genres.
The Texas Institute of Letters is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to stimulate interest in Texas letters and to recognize distinctive literary achievement. Induction into the TIL is based on literary achievement.
Stephen Harrigan has also been a prolific screenwriter, principally in the field of made-for-television movies, a career he recounted in a Slate essay titled "I Was an A-List Writer of B-List Productions." [4] Among the films he has written are The Last of His Tribe (HBO), Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (CBS), King of Texas (TNT) and The Colt (The Hallmark Channel.) He worked with Robert Altman on a feature version of S. R. Bindler's documentary, Hands on a Hard Body, about an endurance contest to win a pickup truck. Altman was in pre-production on the movie at the time of his death in November 2006. [5] More recently, he has collaborated with William Broyles Jr. on a screenplay based on Conn Igulden's series of novels about Julius Caesar. That project is in development with Exclusive Media. Robert Duvall optioned—as producer and star—another screenplay, The Which Way Tree, based on the novel by Elizabeth Crook. Harrigan and Crook co-wrote the screenplay.
Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder and its sequel, Beyond the Prairie, Part 2: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, are television films which were presented in two parts, the first in 2000, and the second in 2002, which presented episodes from the later books in the Little House on the Prairie series.
King of Texas is a 2002 American television film based on William Shakespeare's King Lear and directed by Uli Edel.
The Colt is a 2005 television movie made for Hallmark Channel. The film is set during the American Civil War, and is based on the short story by Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov.
Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen live in Austin, Texas. They have three daughters and five grandchildren. For twenty years, he taught creative writing in the MFA program at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a founding member of Capital Area Statues, Inc., an organization that raises money for public monuments that celebrate the history and culture of Texas. He was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame [6] and has won lifetime achievement awards from the Texas Book Festival [7] and the Texas Institute of Letters. [8]
The Michener Center for Writers is an interdisciplinary Masters of Fine Arts program in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin. It is widely regarded as one of the top creative writing programs in the world.
The Texas Book Festival is a free annual book fair held in Austin, Texas. The festival was established in 1995 by Laura Bush, then the First Lady of Texas, and Mary Margaret Farabee, wife of former State Senator Ray Farabee. The first festival took place at the Texas State Capitol in November 1996. The festival takes place in late October or early November. It is frequently cited as one of the top book festivals in the United States.
Texas Monthly or stylized as TexasMonthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Downtown Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy and has been published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. since 1998 and now owned by Genesis Park, LP. Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education. The magazine also covers leisure topics such as music, art, dining, and travel. It is a member of the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA).
The Player is a 1992 American satirical black comedy film directed by Robert Altman and written by Michael Tolkin, based on his own 1988 novel of the same name. The film stars Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James, Cynthia Stevenson and is the story of a Hollywood film studio executive who kills an aspiring screenwriter he believes is sending him death threats.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American filmmaker. Linklater is known for his realistic and natural humanist films, which revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the observational comedy film Slacker (1990); the coming-of-age comedy film Dazed and Confused (1993); the romantic drama Before trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the animated films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006); the epic coming-of age drama Boyhood (2014); and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).
Harry Jay Knowles is a film critic and writer known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles was a member of the Austin Film Critics Association, from which he was removed in September 2017 "by a substantial majority vote" of the organization following allegations of sexual assault.
Stephen Chbosky is an American novelist, screenwriter, and film director best-known for writing The New York Times bestselling coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), as well as for writing and directing the film version of the same book, starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and Ezra Miller. He also wrote the screenplay for the 2005 film Rent and Disney's 2017 live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, alongside Evan Spiliotopoulos, and was co-creator, executive producer, and writer of the CBS television series Jericho, which aired from 2006 to 2008. Most recently, he directed the 2017 drama Wonder, starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay. His next novel, Imaginary Friend, was published in October 2019.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1983 American dark fantasy film directed by Jack Clayton and produced by Walt Disney Productions, from a screenplay written by Ray Bradbury, based on his novel of the same name. The title was taken from a line in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Macbeth: "By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes." It stars Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd, and Pam Grier.
Jack Edward Jackson, better known by his pen name Jaxon, was an American cartoonist, illustrator, historian, and writer. He co-founded Rip Off Press, and some consider him to be the first underground comix artist, due to his most well-known comic strip God Nose.
Andrew Brion Hogan Goddard is an American film and television screenwriter, director, and producer. He began his career as a writer on television series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Lost. He created the Netflix superhero series Daredevil.
Austin Film Festival (AFF), founded in 1994, is an organization in Austin, Texas, that focuses on writers’ creative contributions to film. Initially, AFF was called the Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference and functioned to launch the careers of screenwriters, who historically have been underrepresented within the film industry.
Kim David Henkel is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. He is best known as the co-writer of Tobe Hooper's horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Edwin A. "Bud" Shrake, Jr. was an American journalist, sportswriter, novelist, biographer and screenwriter. He co-wrote a series of golfing advice books with golf coach Harvey Penick, including Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, a golf guide that became the best-selling sports book in publishing history. Called a “lion of Texas letters” by the Austin American-Statesman, Shrake was a member of the Texas Film Hall of Fame, and received the Lon Tinkle lifetime achievement award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award.
Joe M. O'Connell is an American novelist, documentary filmmaker, short story writer, photographer and journalist based in Austin, Texas.
Ernest Christy Cline is an American novelist, slam poet, and screenwriter. He is known for his novels Ready Player One and Armada; he also co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Born in Texas, William Hauptman received a BFA from the University of Texas Drama Department and later traveled to San Francisco and New York. A graduate who received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, he is the author of both plays and fiction.
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.
Robert Draper is an American journalist, and author of, most recently, Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a correspondent for GQ and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Previously, he worked for Texas Monthly.
Texas literature is literature about the history and culture of Texas. It ranges broadly in literary genres and dates from the time of the first European contact.
The Polished Hoe is a novel by Barbadian writer Austin Clarke, published by Thomas Allen Publishers in 2002. It was the winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canada and the Caribbean region and 2003 Trillium Book Award.
Robert Jackson Bennett is an American writer of speculative fiction.
End of Watch is a crime novel by American writer Stephen King, the third volume of a trilogy focusing on Detective Bill Hodges, following Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. The book was first announced at an event at St. Francis College on April 21, 2015 under the title The Suicide Prince. On June 10, the new title End of Watch was announced. At the 2015 Edgar Awards, while accepting the award for Best Novel for Mr. Mercedes, King announced that the novel's antagonist, Brady Hartsfield, would be making a return in this book.
