Barry Hannah: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|American author}}

'''Barry Hannah''' was born in 1942 in Clinton, Mississippi. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Mississippi College in 1964. He spent the next three years at the University of Arkansas where he earned a Master of Arts in 1966, and the Master of Fine Arts in 1967.

{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->

|name = Barry Hannah

|image =

|caption =

|birth_date = {{Birth date|1942|4|23}}

|birth_place = [[Meridian, Mississippi]], U.S.

|death_date = {{Death date and age|2010|3|1|1942|4|23}}

|death_place = [[Oxford, Mississippi]], U.S.

|occupation = {{flatlist|

* [[Short story writer]]

* [[novelist]]

* [[professor]]

}}

|education = [[Mississippi College]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])<br>[[University of Arkansas]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]], [[Master of Fine Arts|MFA]])

|genre = [[Short story]], [[novel]]

|period = 1965–2010

|children = 3

}}

'''Barry Hannah''' (April 23, 1942 – March 1, 2010) was an American [[novelist]] and [[short story]] writer from Mississippi.<ref>Obituary ''[[The New York Times]]''. March 3, 2010. page A27.</ref><ref name="latimesobit">Kellogg, Carolyn (March 2, 2010). [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/03/barry-hannah-has-died.html "Author Barry Hannah, 67, has died"]. ''[[Los Angeles Times]]''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref> Hannah was born in [[Meridian, Mississippi]], on April 23, 1942, and grew up in [[Clinton, Mississippi|Clinton]], Mississippi. He wrote eight novels and five short story collections.<ref name="OxfordConference">{{cite web |url=http://oxfordconferenceforthebook.com/OCB%202007_files/overview.htm |title=Oxford Conference for the Book |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100305082500/http://oxfordconferenceforthebook.com/OCB%202007_files/overview.htm |archive-date=March 5, 2010 }}</ref>

His first novel, ''Geronimo Rex'' (1972), was nominated for the National Book Award. ''Airships'', his 1978 collection of short stories about the [[Vietnam War]], the [[American Civil War]], and the modern South, won the [[Arnold Gingrich]] Short Fiction Award. The following year, Hannah received the prestigious Award in Literature from the [[American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters]]. Hannah won a [[Guggenheim Fellowship|Guggenheim]], the [[Robert Penn Warren]] Lifetime Achievement Award, and the [[PEN/Malamud Award]] for excellence in the art of the short story.<ref name="OxfordConference"/>

Hannah’s first novel, Geromino Rex, won the William Faulkner prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. His other novels include Nightwatchmen, Ray, Hey Jack!, Boomerang, Never Die, The Tennis Handsome, and Yonder Stands your orphan. Hannah is also known for his collection of short stories, which include Airships, Captain Maximus, Bats out of Hell, and High Lonesome.

Hannah was twice the recipient of a [[Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award]] in Fiction and received Mississippi's prestigious Governor's Award in 1989 for distinguished representation of the state of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters. For a brief time Hannah lived in Los Angeles and worked as a writer for the film director [[Robert Altman]].<ref name="latimesobit" /> He was director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, where he taught creative writing for 28 years. He died on March 1, 2010, of a heart attack.<ref name="PettusAP">Pettus, Emily Wagster (March 2, 2010). [https://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/8969663 "Author Barry Hannah dies at 67 in Mississippi"]. Associated Press. ''[[The Guardian]]''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref>

Barry Hannah resides in Oxford, Mississippi and is director of the master of fine arts program at The University of Mississippi.

==Early life==

Hannah was born in [[Meridian, Mississippi]], on April 23, 1942, and grew up in [[Clinton, Mississippi|Clinton]], [[Mississippi]]. He had three children, a daughter Lee and two sons, Barry Jr. and Ted. He was married three times, the last to Susan (Varas) Hannah (1946–2010).<ref name="nytobit">[[William Grimes (journalist)|Grimes, William]] (March 3, 2010). [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/books/03hannah.html "Barry Hannah, Darkly Comic Writer, Dies at 67"]. ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref>

==Education==

At [[Mississippi College]], Hannah majored in pre-med but later switched to literature.<ref>Smith, Kayla (April 23, 2013). [http://deepsouthmag.com/2013/04/remembering-barry-hannah/ "Have You Heard of Barry Hannah?"]. ''Deep South Magazine''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref> He earned a [[Bachelor of Arts]] degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1964.<ref name="nytobit" /> He spent the next three years at the [[University of Arkansas]], where he earned a [[Master of Arts]] in 1966 and a [[Master of Fine Arts]] in 1967.<ref name="nytobit" />

==Writing==

Barry Hannah's fictions contain situational humor that spans a wide gamut, from the [[Surreal humour|surreal]] to [[grotesque]] and [[black humor]].<ref>Weston, Ruth D. (1998). [https://books.google.com/books?id=TWx0nW8FqqIC&pg=PA106 ''Barry Hannah: Postmodern Romantic'']. p.&nbsp;106. quote: "The complex nature of Barry Hannah's humor has deep roots in these American literary traditions, to which he brings his unique comic vision. the situational humor in his fiction, which runs the gamut from slapstick burlesque to parody and the absurd and from the malappropriate to the Gothic grotesque and macabre,"</ref> His first publication was a story that was placed in a national anthology of the best college writing when he was a student at the University of Arkansas. Soon after that, Hannah wrote "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt":

{{quote|text=And then I wrote my first truly good story, "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt," which was a piece of my then-forthcoming book, ''Geronimo Rex''. I was about twenty-three. It really lit up for me, I thought. I don't really care what folks think of it now, but "Mother Rooney" was a springboard to the rest of my creative life.<ref>{{cite magazine |date=March 2, 2010 |url=http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2010/mar/02/barry-hannah-19422010/ |title=Barry Hannah 1942-2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100307065624/http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2010/mar/02/barry-hannah-19422010/ |archive-date=March 7, 2010 |work=[[Oxford American]]}}</ref>}}

Hannah's first novel, the [[Wiktionary:grotesque|grotesque]] [[Bildungsroman|coming-of-age tale]] ''Geronimo Rex'' (1972), was nominated for the [[National Book Award]].<ref name="PettusAP" /> ''Nightwatchmen'' (1973), his second novel, was a difficult book, and it is his only work never to be reissued in paperback.<ref>Wright, Snowden (April 10, 2013). [http://www.themillions.com/2013/04/barry-hannahs-lost-novel.html "Barry Hannah's 'Lost' Novel"]. ''[[The Millions]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref> Hannah returned to form, however, with the short-story collection ''Airships'' (1978). Most of the stories in the volume were first published in ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'' magazine by its fiction editor at the time, [[Gordon Lish]].<ref name="nytobit" /> The short novel ''Ray'' (1980) was a critical success and a minor breakthrough for Hannah, and one of his best-known novels.<ref>Ellis, Lee (March 3, 2010). [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/03/sabers-gentlemen-remembering-barry-hannah.html "Sabers, Gentlemen: Remembering Barry Hannah"]. ''[[The New Yorker]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref>

After the grotesque [[Western (genre)|Western]] [[Wiktionary:pastiche|pastiche]] ''Never Die'' (1991),<ref>Turner, Daniel (2012). ''Southern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South''. [[University of Tennessee Press]]. {{ISBN|9781572338944}}. p.&nbsp;202.</ref> Hannah stuck to short stories for the rest of the decade, first with the immense ''Bats Out of Hell'' (1993), which featured 23 stories over close to 400 pages, making it Hannah's longest book, and then with ''High Lonesome'' (1996), which was nominated for the [[Pulitzer Prize]].<ref name="latimesobit" /> After a near-fatal bout with [[non-Hodgkin lymphoma]],<ref>Howorth, Richard (March 15, 2010). [https://web.archive.org/web/20100308220241/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969779,00.html "Barry Hannah"]. ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref> Hannah returned in 2001 with ''Yonder Stands Your Orphan'' (the title is taken from [[Bob Dylan]]'s song "[[It's All Over Now, Baby Blue]]"), his longest novel since ''Geronimo Rex''. In this novel, Hannah returned to a small community north of Vicksburg and to some of the characters featured in stories from ''Airships'' and ''Bats Out of Hell''.<ref>Bernstein, Richard (July 10, 2001). [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/books/books-of-the-times-giving-in-to-the-urge-to-do-bad-in-the-south.html "Books of the Times; Giving In to the Urge To Do Bad in the South"]. ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref><ref>Bjerre, Thomas (2007). "Heroism and the Changing Face of American Manhood in Barry Hannah's Fiction" in Bone, Martin (ed) ''Perspectives on Barry Hannah''. [[University Press of Mississippi]], {{ISBN|9781578069194}}. p.&nbsp;60.</ref>

Hannah attempted one more novel, which underwent several title changes. In a 2003 interview with the ''[[Austin Chronicle]]'', Hannah called it ''Last Days''. A 2005 interview with Hannah in ''[[The Paris Review]]'' featured a manuscript page from the then-titled ''Long, Last, Happy''.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}} Then a 2009 issue of the literary journal ''[[Gulf Coast (magazine)|Gulf Coast]]'' featured an excerpt from the novel, titled ''Sick Soldier at Your Door''.<ref>Hannah, Barry (2009). [http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/index.php?n=2&s=12 An excerpt from "Sick Soldier at Your Door"]. ''[[Gulf Coast (magazine)|Gulf Coast]]''. 21:1. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref> The same excerpt was printed in the June 2009 issue of ''[[Harper's Magazine]]''.<ref>Hannah, Barry (2009). [http://harpers.org/archive/2009/06/sick-soldier-at-your-door/ "Sick soldier at your door"]. ''[[Harper's Magazine]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013.</ref> A subsequent interview with [[Tom Franklin (author)|Tom Franklin]] in the Summer 2009 issue of ''Tin House'' revealed that ''Sick Soldier at Your Door'' had been reconceived as a collection of short stories.<ref>[[Tom Franklin (author)|Franklin, Tom]] (March 2, 2010). [https://web.archive.org/web/20111209055608/http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/4724/barry-hannah-1942-2010.html "Barry Hannah, 1942-2010"]. ''[[Tin House]]''. Retrieved May 19, 2013. Archived from [http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/4724/barry-hannah-1942-2010.html the original] on December 9, 2011.</ref> The stories were published in November 2011 by [[Grove Press]] under the title ''[[Long, Last, Happy|Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.groveatlantic.com/#page=isbn9780802119681|title=Barry Hannah: Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories|date=June 8, 2010|publisher=[[Grove Atlantic]]|access-date=June 8, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100615065504/http://www.groveatlantic.com/#page=isbn9780802119681|archive-date=June 15, 2010|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Teaching==

Hannah taught creative writing at the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.uiowa.edu/~iww/faculty/ |title=Faculty |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130404175229/http://www.uiowa.edu/~iww/faculty/ |archive-date=April 4, 2013 |publisher=[[Iowa Writers' Workshop]], [[University of Iowa]] |access-date=May 18, 2013}}</ref> [[Clemson University]], [[Bennington College]], [[Middlebury College]], the [[University of Alabama]], [[Texas State University]], and the [[University of Montana - Missoula]].<ref name="nytobit" /><ref>Cobb, Mark Hughes (September 25, 2008). [http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080925/NEWS/809240256 "Noted writer Barry Hannah returns to UA"]. ''[[The Tuscaloosa News]]''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref><ref>Wilkes, Byron (March 7, 2010). [http://meridianstar.com/local/x1897229880/Hannah-and-his-works-will-long-be-remembered "Hannah and his works will long be remembered"]. ''[[The Meridian Star]]''. Retrieved May 18, 2013.</ref> He was a frequent visiting writer at the summer creative writing seminars at Sewanee.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://sewaneewriters.org/blog/barry-hannah-1942-2010 |title=Barry Hannah (1942-2010) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110531114630/http://sewaneewriters.org/blog/barry-hannah-1942-2010 |archive-date=May 31, 2011 |publisher=[[Sewanee Writers' Conference]] |access-date=May 18, 2013}}</ref>

Hannah was the director of the M.F.A. program at the [[University of Mississippi]], where he was known as a "generous mentor".<ref name="starnewsobit">{{cite news |last=Steelman |first=Ben |date=March 2, 2010 |url=http://books.blogs.starnewsonline.com/11458/barry-hannah-r-i-p/?pa=2&tc=pg |title=Barry Hannah, R.I.P. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716131535/http://books.blogs.starnewsonline.com/11458/barry-hannah-r-i-p/?pa=2&tc=pg |archive-date=July 16, 2011 |work=[[Star-News]] |access-date=May 18, 2013}}</ref> Early during his tenure at the University of Mississippi, he came to class drunk and was known for "drinking heavily".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://jesseyancy.com/barry/ |title=Barry – Mississippi Sideboard |website=jesseyancy.com |access-date=January 19, 2018}}</ref> His students included [[Larry Brown (author)|Larry Brown]], [[Bob Shacochis]], [[Donna Tartt]] and [[Wells Tower]].<ref name="nytobit" /><ref name="starnewsobit" />

==Death==

Hannah died of a [[myocardial infarction|heart attack]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124275611 |title=Barry Hannah: A Southern Literary Force Dies At 67 |date=March 4, 2010 |publisher=[[National Public Radio]] |access-date=March 4, 2010| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100307081242/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124275611 |archive-date=March 7, 2010 |url-status=live}}</ref> in [[Oxford, Mississippi]], on March 1, 2010, at the age of 67.<ref name="PettusAP"/> His death was just days before the 17th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, held in his hometown. Hannah and his work were the focus of that year's conference.<ref name="OxfordConference"/>

==Awards==

*The William Faulkner Prize, given by the [[University of Rennes]]

*The Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction

*The [[Arnold Gingrich]] Short Fiction Award

*The Award for Literature from the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]]

*The PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction

*[[Robert Penn Warren]] Lifetime Achievement Award

*[[Guggenheim Fellowship]] (1983)

==Publications==

===Novels===

*''Geronimo Rex'' (1972)

*''Nightwatchmen'' (1973)

*''Ray'' (1980)

*''The Tennis Handsome'' (1983)

*''Hey Jack!'' (1987)

*''Boomerang'' (1989)

*''Never Die'' (1991)

*''Yonder Stands Your Orphan'' (2001)

===Story collections===

*''Airships'' (1978)

*''Captain Maximus'' (1985)

*''Bats out of Hell'' (1993)

*''High Lonesome'' (1996)

*''[[Long, Last, Happy|Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories]]'' (Nov. 2010)

===Essays===

*"Memories of Tennessee Williams", ''Mississippi Review'', Vol. 48, 1995.

*"Introduction" ''The Book of Mark'', Pocket Canon, Grove-Atlantic, 1999.

==References==

{{reflist|2}}

==External links==

*{{cite journal |url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5438/the-art-of-fiction-no-184-barry-hannah |title=Barry Hannah, The Art of Fiction No. 184 |author=Lacey Galbraith |work=[[The Paris Review]] |date=Winter 2004 |issue=172}}

* [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:146049 ''Southern Destroyer'' in ''Austin Chronicle'']

* [http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/03/writers-remember-barry-hannah.html Writers Remember Barry Hannah] by Claire Howorth

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100305081149/http://gardenandgun.com/article/barry-hannahs-long-shadow Barry Hannah's Long Shadow] by [[Wells Tower]]

* Kim Herzinger, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20115378 "On the New Fiction"] ''Mississippi Review'', Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Winter, 1985), pp.&nbsp;7–22.

*[http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/literary-mourning-thoughts-on-barry-hannah Literary Mourning: Thoughts on Barry Hannah]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hannah, Barry}}

[[Category:1942 births]]

[[Category:2010 deaths]]

[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]

[[Category:21st-century American novelists]]

[[Category:American male novelists]]

[[Category:People from Oxford, Mississippi]]

[[Category:People from Clinton, Mississippi]]

[[Category:Mississippi College alumni]]

[[Category:American male short story writers]]

[[Category:PEN/Malamud Award winners]]

[[Category:20th-century American short story writers]]

[[Category:21st-century American short story writers]]

[[Category:Writers of American Southern literature]]

[[Category:Novelists from Mississippi]]

[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]

[[Category:21st-century American male writers]]