Kent Haruf

Alan Kent Haruf (rhymes with sheriff; February 24, 1943 – November 30, 2014) was an American writer born and raised in the US state of Colorado. He wrote six novels and several short stories set on the High Plains, mostly in the fictional town of Holt.

After completing his undergraduate degree in English at Nebraska Wesleyan, Haruf enrolled in the Peace Corps and performed work in lieu of military service before receiving a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He initially struggled to establish a career as a writer; in addition to stints as a janitor, construction worker and farmhand, Haruf spent years teaching English at a high school in Wisconsin and at universities in Nebraska and Illinois. His writing was first published in 1984 when he was 41. Although Haruf's first two novels received critical praise, commercial success eluded him until the publication of Plainsong in 1999, which became a bestseller. He followed it up with Eventide (2005), a direct sequel to Plainsong, and Benediction (2013).

Throughout Haruf's career, critics praised his spare and elegant prose, authentic portrayals of rural life, and attention to the beauty found in ordinary things, although he was occasionally criticized for redundancy. In early 2014, Haruf was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease. He wrote his final book, Our Souls at Night, while ill and died that November. The book was published posthumously and adapted into a film of the same name. A Colorado magazine, 5280, wrote that Haruf is "widely considered Colorado's finest novelist", and the Dublin Review of Books called his work "both uniquely American and profoundly universal".

Life

Alan Kent Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, on February 24, 1943, one of four children of Eleanor and Louis Haruf. As a child, he had a cleft lip, and his family's community raised money for a pair of surgeries at Children's Hospital in Denver. The first operation partially addressed the issue, but the surgeon died in a plane crash before the second operation, and it never took place. As Haruf's father worked as a Methodist minister, his family moved frequently when he was a child, and they lived in several small towns in northeastern Colorado. Haruf graduated from Cañon City High School in 1961. As a youth, Haruf aspired to be a rancher, following in the path of both his grandfathers.

Initially, Haruf studied biology at Nebraska Wesleyan University, but he changed his plans after reading Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner's work. He graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching English in Turkey while writing short stories, which he later described as "a good experience for me but of little value to the Turks". Virginia 'Ginger' Koon and Haruf were married in 1967, after his return to the United States. He briefly attended an English graduate program at the University of Kansas, but withdrew during his second semester. Haruf was drafted into the military amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, but as a conscientious objector, served instead at the Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver and an orphanage in Montana. He and Koon had three children, all daughters.

Unable to establish a career as a writer, Haruf taught high school English in Madison, Wisconsin, where he lived with his family for four years. He sought to attend the well-known Iowa Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa, but was rejected. Undeterred, Haruf moved his family to Iowa City and began working as a janitor while submitting more stories to the program—he was eventually accepted. He graduated from the program with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1973. Haruf studied with and learned from many other writers at Iowa, including Vance Bourjaily, John Irving, Seymour Krim, and Dan Wakefield. For his thesis, Haruf produced a novel, which Harper & Row expressed interest in publishing. However, they balked at the finished work, which was also rejected by other publishers. Years later, Haruf told an interviewer that the novel had not deserved publication.

After graduating from Iowa, he took odd jobs on a chicken farm, with a railroad company, and as a construction worker to earn a living. Haruf was eventually hired in 1976 for a position as an assistant professor at his alma mater, Nebraska Wesleyan, and wrote during the summers. He did not succeed in selling his writing until 1984, at age 41, when a short story was accepted at Puerto del Sol. The same year, he connected with agent Peter Matson through Irving. Matson sold Haruf's first published novel, The Tie That Binds, to Holt Rinehart & Winston, and it came out in the fall of 1984. The novel brought Haruf some recognition but did not sell well. His second novel, Where You Once Belonged, was published in 1990 by Summit Books. It also received critical praise but produced even poorer sales, leading him to "despair" at his finances. In 1991, Haruf began teaching at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and was able to devote more time to writing. Haruf and Koon separated in the late 1980s and divorced in 1992. He reconnected with a high school friend, Cathy Dempsey (née Shattuck), at their 30th class reunion in 1991. Haruf and Dempsey married in 1995 and initially lived in Murphysboro, Illinois.