JOSEPH HEYWOOD is the author of nineteen novels, three short story collections, a memoir, a “fictionary” – a dictionary of Yooper terms, nonce words, and language, and a cartoon book. His most recent work was Out of Service, the twelfth title in the Woods Cop Mystery series. He is now working on Clear of the Last, the thirteenth and final title in the series, which launched in 2001 with Ice Hunter. Heywood’s works appear in 19 languages. Born in Dutchess County New York, on the Hudson River, Heywood grew up in an Air Force family and has lived all over the world. He is a proud graduate of Rudyard High School in Chippewa County in the Eastern U.P., a 1965 graduate of Michigan State (BA-Journalism), and has taught in Western Michigan University’s Professional Writing Program.
Heywood spent five years in the USAF as a navigator on a KC 135 Stratotanker. He accumulated @1,800 flying hours in his service, flew 168 missions in Vietnam, earned six Air Medals flying during Vietnam, and left the service as an instructor navigator with the rank of captain. His talk in Calumet will be from this period of his life. After military service, the author worked 30 years for The Upjohn Company (of Kalamazoo), now part of Pfizer. He retired as Vice President of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Public Relations, with offices in Brussels and Tokyo. Heywood, his artist and jeweler wife Lonnie, and their 13-year-old dog Shaksper, have lived for six months each year for the past three years in Keweenaw County. He and or they have also lived for extended periods in Baraga, Chippewa, Delta, Iron, Luce, Marquette, and Menominee Counties.
At the Calumet Public Library, he will talk about fake news, not in some scholarly and theoretical way, but based on a real event which took place in the UP August 14, 1969, and and of which, he was a participant. Says Heywood, “Many people in the U.P. and around the state and country heard about the events of August1969, but only five people were actually inside the plane.” Four of them parachuted out of the plane that night; before then, only two airmen had ever survived a bailout from a KC-135 tanker, but that night added four more to that very short list. Heywood was number four of the six in history.
For more information, visit the library or call 337-0311 ext. 1107
(In case of bad weather, when school is cancelled, all library programs are cancelled.)
Also check out other Arts events in Calumet, Literary Art events in Calumet.
