Blind Astronomer's Daughter (Pipkin) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Washington & Lee University; M.A., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill;
   Ph.D., Rice University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas


John George Pipkin is an American author of historical novels, who holds a PhD in British Romantic Literature from Rice University in Houston, Texas, an MA in English from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a BA from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. His first novel, Woodsburner, published in 2009, won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Massachusetts Center for the Book Fiction Prize, and the Texas Institute of Letters Steven Turner Award.

Woodsburner revolves around a little-known event in the life of Henry David Thoreau: in 1844, Thoreau accidentally set fire to 300 acres of woods around Concord, Massachusetts, and Pipkin imagines the impact of that fire upon Thoreau, as well as three other characters.

The Blind Astronomer's Daughter, published in2016, concerns astronomical discoveries in the 18th century and, in particular, a fictional astronomer who commits suicide and his daughter who struggles to resume her father's work in scientific discovery.

In 2010, Pipkin was named writer-in-residence at Southwestern University, and was awarded the Dobie Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters. He teaches writing at Southwestern University, at the University of Texas at Austin, and in Spalding University's Low-Residency MFA Program.

Pipkin has been awarded a 2016 MacDowell Colony (New Hampshire) Residential Fellowship for ongoing work on his third novel. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/19/2017.)