Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was widely considered one of the finest voices of his generation. His twenty-one books of fiction and fourteen books of poetry influenced a generation of writers. Harrison helped to shape the course of contemporary American literature, revitalizing in particular the novella form, of which he was a recognized master.
Harrison’s literary achievements were matched only by the literary persona that he cultivated during a fecund time in American letters and in the company of a remarkable cohort of friends, writers, actors, and artists, including Thomas McGuane, Peter Matthiessen, and Jack
Nicholson. Writing for magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Esquire, and Outside in the 1970s, his journalism won him a loyal readership who reveled in his high spirits and prodigious appetites. For all his notoriety as a writer of prose, however, poetry remained his first and longest-abiding love.
He cherished his geographic remoteness
from what he called the “dream coasts” of New York City and Los Angeles, preferring to hunt, fish, and drink in the backwoods bars of Michigan, Arizona, and Montana.
Based on more than one hundred original interviews and drawing upon Harrison’s collected papers, Devouring Time is the first and only literary biography of this beloved author, whose playful, irreverent, and spiritual work continues to find and delight new readers.
Join author Todd Goddard and Joseph Bednarik, Jim Harrison's long-time poetry editor and co-publisher of Copper Canyon Press for a wonderful conversation about Harrison and his literary legacy.
Goddard is an associate professor of
literary studies at Utah Valley University in
Orem, Utah. He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His work has been funded by the Mellon Foundation and a Bordin-Gillette Fellowship from the University of Michigan. He lives in Salt Lake City.
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