Dobyns, Stephen

▪ American poet

born Feb. 19, 1941, Orange, N.J., U.S.

      American poet and novelist whose works are characterized by a cool realism laced with pungent wit.

      Dobyns attended Shimer College, Mount Carroll, Illinois, and graduated from Wayne State University (B.A., 1964), Detroit, Michigan, and the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1967), Iowa City. He taught English for a year before becoming a reporter for the Detroit News in 1969. From 1973, while writing fiction and poetry, he served as visiting lecturer and teacher at several American colleges and universities.

      Dobyns's first collection of poetry, Concurring Beasts, appeared in 1971. The following year he published the novel A Man of Little Evils, and from that point on he alternated between poetry and crime fiction, publishing roughly a book a year. His subsequent poetry volumes include Griffon (1976), Heat Death (1980), Black Dog, Red Dog (1984), Cemetery Nights (1987), Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966–1992 (1994), and Common Carnage (1996). He wrote a series of crime novels featuring Charlie Bradshaw, a Saratoga Springs, New York, detective, which includes Saratoga Longshot (1976), Saratoga Snapper (1986), and Saratoga Fleshpot (1995). Among his other novels are Dancer with One Leg (1983), Cold Dog Soup (1985), The Two Deaths of Señora Puccini (1988), After Shocks, Near Escapes (1991), The Wrestler's Cruel Study (1993), and The Church of Dead Girls (1997).

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