Walter Norris Kirn (born August 3, 1962) is an American
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire ...
,
literary critic
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. ...
, and
essay
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...
ist. He is the author of eight books, most notably ''
Up in the Air'', which was made into a
film of the same name starring
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards, one for his acting and the ot ...
.
Overview
As a writer, he has published a collection of short stories and several novels, including ''
Thumbsucker'', which was made into a 2005 film featuring
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Charles Reeves ( ; born September 2, 1964) is a Canadian actor. Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, Reeves began acting in theatre productions and in television films before making his feature film debut in '' Youngblood'' (1986). ...
and
Vince Vaughn
Vincent Anthony Vaughn (born March 28, 1970) is an American actor.
Vaughn began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before attaining wider recognition with the 1996 comedy-drama film '' Swingers''. He has appeared in ...
; ''
Up in the Air'', which was made into a 2009 film directed by
Jason Reitman
Jason R. Reitman (; born October 19, 1977) is a Canadian-American actor and filmmaker, best known for directing the films '' Thank You for Smoking'' (2005), '' Juno'' (2007), '' Up in the Air'' (2009), '' Young Adult'' (2011), and '' Ghostbuste ...
; and ''
Mission to America''. The
film adaptation
A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dia ...
of ''Up In The Air'', which starred
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards, one for his acting and the ot ...
and
Anna Kendrick
Anna Cooke Kendrick (born August 9, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Satellite Award, five Teen Choice Awards, three MTV Movie Awards, and nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award a ...
, was a commercial success and went on to receive critical acclaim as well as numerous nominations and awards. In 2005, he took over blogger
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...
's publication for a few weeks while Sullivan was on vacation. He also wrote ''
The Unbinding'', an Internet-only novel that was published in ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' magazine. His most recent work, ''
Blood Will Out'', is a personalized account of his relationship with the convicted murderer and imposter
Clark Rockefeller
Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (born February 21, 1961) is a German convicted murderer and impostor. Born in West Germany, he is currently serving a prison sentence in the U.S. state of California. After moving to the U.S. in his late teens, Ge ...
.
He has also reviewed books for ''
New York Magazine
''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...
'' and has written for ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'' and ''
New York Times Sunday Magazine'', and is a contributing editor of ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'', where he has received popularity for his entertaining and sometimes humorous first-person essays among other articles of interest. He also served as an American cultural correspondent for the
BBC.
In addition to teaching nonfiction writing at the
University of Montana
The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fa ...
, Kirn was the 2008–09 Vare Nonfiction Writer in Residence at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. He graduated with an A.B. in English from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1983 after completing a 22-page-long senior thesis entitled "Entangling Breaths (Poems)." Following that, he obtained a second undergraduate degree in English Literature at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, where he was a Keasbey Memorial Foundation Scholar.
Personal life
Kirn was born in
Akron, Ohio
Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city ...
, but grew up in
Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota. After high school, he attended
Macalester College
Macalester College () is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 2,174 students in the fall of 2018 from 50 U.S. states, four U.S te ...
for one year before transferring to Princeton University.
Kirn's family joined
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...
when he was twelve, but Kirn is no longer affiliated with the church. In 1995, Kirn married Maggie McGuane, daughter of actress
Margot Kidder
Margaret Ruth Kidder (October 17, 1948 – May 13, 2018), known professionally as Margot Kidder, was a Canadian-American actress whose career spanned five decades. Her accolades include three Canadian Screen Awards and one Daytime Emmy A ...
and novelist
Thomas McGuane
Thomas Francis McGuane III (born December 11, 1939) is an American writer. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is a member of the American A ...
. Kirn was 32 at the time; McGuane was 19.
The couple had two children but have since divorced. Kirn is now married to magazine writer Amanda Fortini. The two split their time between
Livingston, Montana
Livingston is a city and county seat of Park County, Montana, United States. It is in southwestern Montana, on the Yellowstone River, north of Yellowstone National Park. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 8,040.
History
T ...
and
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...
.
Bibliography
*''My Hard Bargain: Stories'' (1990)
* ''She Needed Me'' (1992)
* ''
Thumbsucker'' (1999)
* ''
Up in the Air'' (2001)
* ''
Mission to America'' (2005)
* ''The Unbinding'' (2006)
* ''
Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever'' (2009)
* ''
Blood Will Out'' (2013)
Filmography
* ''
Thumbsucker'' (2005)
* ''
Up in the Air'' (2009)
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirn, Walter
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American novelists
Alumni of the University of Oxford
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American memoirists
Former Latter Day Saints
Harper's Magazine people
The New Yorker people
Place of birth missing (living people)
Princeton University alumni
Time (magazine) people
University of Montana faculty