Gifted (Daniel) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1948
• Where—State of South Carolina, USA
• Raised—near Washington, D.C.
• Education—Reed College (no degree); M.A., Stanford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives near Eugen, Oregon


John Daniel is an American poet, essayist, memoirist, novelist and teacher. In all, he has written some 10 books, most recently his 2017 debut novel, Gifted.

Daniel was born in South Carolina, raised outside of Washington, D.C., and in 1966 attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out of Reed but stayed in the West. spending the next 24 years as a logger, railroad inspector, and climbing instructor, among other jobs.

During all that time, Daniel was writing poetry, and in 1982 he won the prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University. He remained at Stanford to earn his M.A. and for the next five years taught Poetry and freshman English.

He now earns a living writing, as well as teaching—in workshops and writer-in-residence programs around the country.

Writing
In addition to his novel, Gifted, Daniel has published a book of essays, The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature (2009); Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone (2005), part journal and part memoir; Winter Creek: One Writer’s Natural History (2002); and Looking After: A Son’s Memoir (1996), about caring for his dying mother.

He has also published three volumes of poetry — Of Earth: New and Selected Poems (2012), All Things Touched by Wind (1994), and Common Ground (1988).

His work can be found in Audubon, Outside, Southwest Review, Western American Literature, Portland Magazine, Open Spaces, Oregon Humanities, Orion, and in more than 20 textbooks and anthologies.

Recognition
Daniel's poetry has won him a Pushcart Prize, John Burroughs Nature Essay Award, three Oregon Book Awards, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.

In addition to the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, he has also been selected for the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, a Research and Writing Fellowship from Oregon State University’s Center for the Humanities, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
 
He has served as chair of PEN Northwest, serves as a judge for, or on the boards of, various literary organizations. He lives with his wife in the Coast Range foothills, west of Eugene, Oregon. (Adapted from the author's bio.)