Barry Hannah was born in Clinton, Mississippi, on April 23, 1942. He earned a B.A. from Mississippi College in 1964, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1966, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Arkansas in 1967. He then taught creative writing at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he remained until 1973. During this time, he earned several impressive awards, including the Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction (1970) and the Bread Loaf Fellowship for Writing (1971). In 1972, Hannah published his first novel,
Geronimo Rex, for which he won the William Faulkner Prize for writing and earned a nomination for the National Book Award. In 1973,
Nightwatchmen was published and received positive reviews, and his reputation as a writer to be reckoned with was well under way.
After a one-year position as Writer-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, he began a five-year position at the University of Alabama teaching literature and creative writing. During this time, he wrote and published
Airships (1978) which many consider to be one of the finest collections of short fiction in the contemporary South. Also in 1978,
Airships won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, leading to Hannah's receiving the prestigious Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters in 1979.
Hannah moved to Hollywood in 1980 to write film scripts for director Robert Altman. That same year,
Ray was published. He then took positions as Writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa (1981), the University of Mississippi (1982), and the University of Montana-Missoula (1983).
Middlebury College in Vermont (home of the acclaimed Bread Loaf Writers' Conference), awarded Hannah a writing fellowship in 1971.
In 1983, Hannah published
The Tennis Handsome and returned to the University of Mississippi as Writer-in-residence. Since returning to Ole Miss, he has continued to publish novels and short story collections to rave reviews, including
Captain Maximus (1985),
Hey Jack! (1987),
Boomerang (1989),
Never Die (1991), and
Bats Out of Hell (1993).
For his 1996 book
High Lonesome, Barry Hannah was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Published in 2002,
Yonder Stands Your Orphan , Hannah's his first novel in ten years, was hailed as the "welcome return of a brilliant writer" by The New York Times, and Hannah was proclaimed to be "the Big Daddy of Southern letters, the mendacity-battling Colossus" by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Publications
Novels:
Geronimo Rex. New York: Viking Press, 1972.
Nightwatchmen. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
Ray. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
The Tennis Handsome. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Captain Maximus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Hey Jack!. New York: E. P. Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, 1987.
Boomerang. Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1989.
Never Die. Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1991.
Short Story Collections:
Airships. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1978.
Bats Out of Hell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1993.
High Lonesome. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996.
Nonfiction:
"Faulkner and the Small Man." In
Faulkner and Humor: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. Fowler, Doreen, and Ann Abadie, eds. Jackson: UP Mississippi, 1984.
Men without Ties. Abbeville Press, 1995.
