Woiwode, Larry

▪ American author

in full  Larry Alfred Woiwode 

born Oct. 30, 1941, Carrington, N.D., U.S.

      American writer whose semiautobiographical fiction reflects his early childhood in a tiny town on the western North Dakota plains, where five generations of his family had lived.

      Woiwode first published fiction while at the University of Illinois, which he attended from 1959 to 1964. His short stories and poetry later appeared in such magazines as Harper's, Partisan Review, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker; from 1965 on, The New Yorker gave a first reading to all his work. Woiwode taught and led writing workshops at Dartmouth College and various universities, including the State University of New York at Binghamton, where (from 1985) he was a full professor and director of the writing program. In 1995 he received the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinction in the art of the short story.

      Woiwode's critically acclaimed first novel, What I'm Going to Do, I Think (1969), is a study of a newly married couple. Beyond the Bedroom Wall: A Family Album (1975) is a multigenerational saga of a North Dakota family; Born Brothers (1988) continues the story of Charles and Jerome Neumiller, characters from Beyond the Bedroom Wall who also appear in The Neumiller Stories (1989). Poppa John (1981) concerns an out-of-work television actor, and Indian Affairs (1992) is a sequel to What I'm Going to Do. In 1977 Woiwode's collected poems were published in Even Tide, and a volume of short stories, Silent Passengers, appeared in 1993.

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