Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah
Born	(1942-04-23)April 23, 1942 Meridian, Mississippi,U.S.
Died	March 1, 2010(2010-03-01)(aged 67) Oxford, Mississippi,U.S.
Occupation	Short story writer novelist professor
Education	Mississippi College(BA) University of Arkansas(MA,MFA)
Period	1965–2010
Genre	Short story,novel
Children	3

Barry Hannah(April 23, 1942 – March 1, 2010) was an Americannovelistandshort storywriter from Mississippi.Hannah was born inMeridian, Mississippi,on April 23, 1942, and grew up inClinton,Mississippi. He wrote eight novels and five short story collections.

His first novel,Geronimo Rex(1972), was nominated for the National Book Award.Airships,his 1978 collection of short stories about theVietnam War,theAmerican Civil War,and the modern South, won theArnold GingrichShort Fiction Award. The following year, Hannah received the prestigious Award in Literature from theAmerican Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.Hannah won aGuggenheim,theRobert Penn WarrenLifetime Achievement Award, and thePEN/Malamud Awardfor excellence in the art of the short story.

Hannah was twice the recipient of aMississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Awardin Fiction and received Mississippi's prestigious Governor's Award in 1989 for distinguished representation of the state of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters. For a brief time Hannah lived in Los Angeles and worked as a writer for the film directorRobert Altman.He was director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, where he taught creative writing for 28 years. He died on March 1, 2010, of a heart attack.

Early life

Hannah was born inMeridian, Mississippi,on April 23, 1942, and grew up inClinton,Mississippi.He had three children, a daughter Lee and two sons, Barry Jr. and Ted. He was married three times, the last to Susan (Varas) Hannah (1946–2010).

Education

AtMississippi College,Hannah majored in pre-med but later switched to literature.He earned aBachelor of Artsdegree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1964.He spent the next three years at theUniversity of Arkansas,where he earned aMaster of Artsin 1966 and aMaster of Fine Artsin 1967.

Writing

Barry Hannah's fictions contain situational humor that spans a wide gamut, from thesurrealtogrotesqueandblack humor.His first publication was a story that was placed in a national anthology of the best college writing when he was a student at the University of Arkansas. Soon after that, Hannah wrote "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt":

And then I wrote my first truly good story, "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt," which was a piece of my then-forthcoming book,Geronimo Rex.I was about twenty-three. It really lit up for me, I thought. I don't really care what folks think of it now, but "Mother Rooney" was a springboard to the rest of my creative life.

Hannah's first novel, thegrotesquecoming-of-age taleGeronimo Rex(1972), was nominated for theNational Book Award.Nightwatchmen(1973), his second novel, was a difficult book, and it is his only work never to be reissued in paperback.Hannah returned to form, however, with the short-story collectionAirships(1978). Most of the stories in the volume were first published inEsquiremagazine by its fiction editor at the time,Gordon Lish.The short novelRay(1980) was a critical success and a minor breakthrough for Hannah, and one of his best-known novels.

After the grotesqueWesternpasticheNever Die(1991),Hannah stuck to short stories for the rest of the decade, first with the immenseBats Out of Hell(1993), which featured 23 stories over close to 400 pages, making it Hannah's longest book, and then withHigh Lonesome(1996), which was nominated for thePulitzer Prize.After a near-fatal bout withnon-Hodgkin lymphoma,Hannah returned in 2001 withYonder Stands Your Orphan(the title is taken fromBob Dylan's song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), his longest novel sinceGeronimo Rex.In this novel, Hannah returned to a small community north of Vicksburg and to some of the characters featured in stories fromAirshipsandBats Out of Hell.

Hannah attempted one more novel, which underwent several title changes. In a 2003 interview with theAustin Chronicle,Hannah called itLast Days.A 2005 interview with Hannah inThe Paris Reviewfeatured a manuscript page from the then-titledLong, Last, Happy.Then a 2009 issue of the literary journalGulf Coastfeatured an excerpt from the novel, titledSick Soldier at Your Door.The same excerpt was printed in the June 2009 issue ofHarper's Magazine.A subsequent interview withTom Franklinin the Summer 2009 issue ofTin Houserevealed thatSick Soldier at Your Doorhad been reconceived as a collection of short stories.The stories were published in November 2011 byGrove Pressunder the titleLong, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories.

Teaching

Hannah taught creative writing at theIowa Writers' Workshop,Clemson University,Bennington College,Middlebury College,theUniversity of Alabama,Texas State University,and theUniversity of Montana - Missoula.He was a frequent visiting writer at the summer creative writing seminars at Sewanee.

Hannah was the director of the M.F.A. program at theUniversity of Mississippi,where he was known as a "generous mentor".Early during his tenure at the University of Mississippi, he came to class drunk and was known for "drinking heavily".His students includedLarry Brown,Bob Shacochis,Donna TarttandWells Tower.

Death

Hannah died of aheart attackinOxford, Mississippi,on March 1, 2010, at the age of 67.His death was just days before the 17th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, held in his hometown. Hannah and his work were the focus of that year's conference.

Awards

• The William Faulkner Prize, given by theUniversity of Rennes
• The Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction
• TheArnold GingrichShort Fiction Award
• The Award for Literature from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters
• The PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction
• Robert Penn WarrenLifetime Achievement Award
• Guggenheim Fellowship(1983)

Publications

Novels

• Geronimo Rex(1972)
• Nightwatchmen(1973)
• Ray(1980)
• The Tennis Handsome(1983)
• Hey Jack!(1987)
• Boomerang(1989)
• Never Die(1991)
• Yonder Stands Your Orphan(2001)

Story collections

• Airships(1978)
• Captain Maximus(1985)
• Bats out of Hell(1993)
• High Lonesome(1996)
• Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories(Nov. 2010)

Essays

• "Memories of Tennessee Williams",Mississippi Review,Vol. 48, 1995.
• "Introduction"The Book of Mark,Pocket Canon, Grove-Atlantic, 1999.

External links

• Lacey Galbraith (Winter 2004)."Barry Hannah, The Art of Fiction No. 184".The Paris Review(172).
• Southern DestroyerinAustin Chronicle
• Writers Remember Barry Hannahby Claire Howorth
• Barry Hannah's Long ShadowbyWells Tower
• Kim Herzinger,"On the New Fiction"Mississippi Review,Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Winter, 1985), pp. 7–22.
• Literary Mourning: Thoughts on Barry Hannah