Frank Bergon (born 1943) is an American writer whose novels, essays, anthologies, and literary criticism focus primarily on the American West.
Biography
Frank Bergon was born in
Ely, Nevada
Ely (, ) is the largest city and county seat of White Pine County, Nevada, United States. Ely was founded as a stagecoach station along the Pony Express and Central Overland Route. In 1906 copper was discovered. Ely's mining boom came later tha ...
, and grew up on a ranch in Madera County in California’s San Joaquin Valley. After attending elementary school at St. Joachim in
Madera, California
Madera (Spanish language, Spanish for "Wood") is a city and county seat of Madera County, California, Madera County, California. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 66,224.
Located in the San Joaquin Valley, Madera i ...
and high school at
Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, he received a B.A. in English at
Boston College, attended
Stanford University as a Wallace
Stegner Fellow, and completed a Ph.D. in English and American Literature at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
.
Writing career
Bergon has published twelve books—four novels, a critical study of
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
, five edited collections and anthologies, and most recently two books of essays. A major concern of his work is with the lives of
Basque Americans in the West. His writing about Native Americans ranges from the Shoshone of Nevada to the Maya of Chiapas, Mexico.
His Nevada trilogy consists of three novels spanning a century from the Shoshone massacre of 1911 (''Shoshone Mike''), to the shooting of Fish and Game officers by the self-styled mountain man
Claude Dallas
Claude Lafayette Dallas Jr. (born March 11, 1950) was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of two game wardens in Idaho. On May 16, 1986, he became the 400th fugitive listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.
Biography
Born in Winches ...
(''Wild Game''), to the current battle over nuclear waste in the Nevada desert (''The Temptations of St. Ed & Brother S'').
Bergon’s California trilogy, consisting of, ''Jesse’s Ghost'', ''Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man: The New Old West'' and ''The Toughest Kid We Knew: The Old New West: A Personal History,'' all focus on the San Joaquin Valley, and his Basque-Béarnais heritage. The trilogy also draws attention to today's sons and daughters of the California
Okies portrayed in
Steinbeck's ''
The Grapes of Wrath
''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award
and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Priz ...
''.
He also writes about the natural history and environment of the American West in both fiction and non-fiction, such as in ''The Journals of
Lewis and Clark''.
With his wife, Holly St. John Bergon, he has published translations of the Spanish poets Antonio Gamaneda, José Ovejero, Xavier Queipo, and Violeta C. Rangel in ''New European Poets'' and ''The European Constitution in Verse''.
Bergon has taught at the University of Washington and for many years at
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...
, where he is Professor Emeritus of English. In 1998, Bergon was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Books
* ''The Toughest Kid We Knew: The Old New West: A Personal History'' (2020)
* ''Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man: The New Old West'' (2019)
* ''Jesse’s Ghost'' (2011)
* ''Wild Game'' (1995)
* ''The Temptations of St. Ed & Brother S'' (1993)
* ''The Journals of Lewis and Clark'', editor (1989)
* ''Shoshone Mike'' (1987)
* ''A Sharp Lookout: Selected Nature Essays of John Burroughs, editor'' (1987)
* ''The Wilderness Reader'', editor (1980)
* ''The Western Writings of Stephen Crane'', editor (1979)
* ''Looking Far West: The Search for the American West in History, Myth, and Literature'', coeditor with Zeese Papanikolas (1978)
* ''Stephen Crane’s Artistry'' (1975)
References
External links
Frank Bergon's websiteFrank Bergon in Online Nevada Encyclopedia
David Rio on Frank Bergon's Shoshone MikeShoshone Mike 100th AnniversaryShoshone Mike in the Basque Country
Frank Bergon, The New Western WriterFrank Bergon's books on AmazonReviews in the New YorkerFrank Bergon at Washington College
Frank Bergon interview in the Basque Country
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergon, Frank
1943 births
Living people
American male writers
American frontier
People from Ely, Nevada
People from Madera, California
American people of Basque descent
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni
Stegner Fellows
Vassar College faculty