Fourth of July Creek (Henderson) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972-73
• Where—state of Montana, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Montana; M.A., University of Texas
• Awards—PEN Emerging Writer Award; Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon


Smith Henderson is the recipient of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award in fiction. He was a Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. Born and raised in Montana, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. (From the publisher.)

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Mr. Henderson comes from a long line of Montana cowboys, sheep herders and dynamiters. He was the first person in his immediate family to attend college. His parents married in high school and his father worked as a logger. He was able to afford college because his mother died of lung disease when he was 19, leaving him with insurance money. In what he calls "a fit of pure vocational idiocy," he majored in classics, and studied Latin and Greek at the University of Montana. He took the first paying job he could get out of college at a group home for juveniles in Missoula, working 36-hour weekend shifts. Like his protagonist, Mr. Henderson worked with children who had been through "massive abuse of every kind, extreme neglect, death, murders, every dark thing you could ever think could happen happened," he said.

He left the job after a couple of years and patched together a living from odd writing jobs. He worked in internal corporate communications for Apple and wrote for the chancellor's office at the University of Texas, working on his fiction on the side. He started working as a copywriter for Wieden+Kennedy in Portland in 2010. (Excerpt from Wall St. Journal.)