Besides the intense yet never overbearing editing that Fisketjon offered, the two developed a friendship over part of Haruf's 15-city author tour. In 1998 Haruf's agent sent 'Plainsong' to Knopf, and Gary Fisketjon became his editor. Later, he received a more prestigious position at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he would write his breakout novel 'Plainsong.' Haruf had been writing for 20 years and was 40 in 1984 when his first book, 'The Tie That Binds,' was published and won a PEN/Hemingway citation and a position teaching freshman composition at Nebraska Wesleyan. Haruf recollects in an essay for Granta: '(Irving) said he had sent 50 writers to his agent and he hadn't taken any of them, but maybe he'd take me. He also developed his fictional landscape of Holt County, Colorado, where all of his novels would be set.Īfter writing for 11 years, it was his friend John Irving who sent Haruf's first novel to his own agent at Holt, Rinehart and Winston. It was in Iowa that Haruf developed important writer friendships with Denis Johnson, Stuart Dybek, Tracy Kidder, T. The University of Kansas instead provided a graduate degree but Haruf still longed for the writer's workshop in Iowa, so he moved to Iowa City in the dead of winter with his wife and baby girl with no placement and a meager job as a janitor in a nursing home. A college course in American literature exposed Haruf to Faulkner and Hemingway and changed his aspirations from a biology teacher to literature and writing.Īfter two years living in Turkey as a Peace Corp volunteer, Haruf applied to the Iowa Writer's Workshop but was rejected.

Kent Haruf was born in 1943 and grew up on high plains of eastern Colorado, the landscape that features prominently in all of his novels. 'Plainsong' is a story about a community coming together when the most predictable lines of support are absent. The interwoven stories stay with the reader long after the book is finished: a watchful teacher, a young pregnant girl who finds support from an unexpected pair of lonely bachelor farmers, a couple of young boys making their way without a mother. The simple wisdom of Kent Haruf's 'Plainsong' is revealed in the choral cast of characters.

Plainsong haruf