Shelby Hearon (January 18, 1931 – December 10, 2016) was an American novelist and short story writer.

Early life

Hearon was born in 1931 in

Marion, Kentucky Marion is a home rule-class city in Crittenden County, Kentucky, in the United States. It is the seat of its county. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,039. The farm communities surrounding Marion are home to a large Amish popu ...

. She attended the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

in 1953.

Career

''Armadillo in the Grass'', her first novel, was begun in 1962 and accepted for publication by Knopf in 1967. Hearon had a teaching career at several colleges, and served on the

Texas Commission on the Arts Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

and the

New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) serves to foster and advance the arts, culture, and creativity throughout New York State, according to its website. The goal of the council is to allow all New Yorkers to benefit from the contribution ...

Awards and recognition

Hearon has been awarded fiction fellowships from the

Ingram Merrill Foundation The Ingram Merrill Foundation was a private foundation established in the mid-1950s by poet James Merrill (1926-1995), using funds from his substantial family inheritance.J. D. McClatchyBraving the Elements ''The New Yorker'', 27 March 1995. Retriev ...

, the Guggenheim Foundation and the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

. She has received the Texas Institute of Letters award twice, and a lifetime achievement award from the Texas Book Festival. Five of her short stories were awarded NEA/PEN syndication Short Story Prizes and she received a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. She has also received a New York Women in Communications Award. Her novel ''Owning Jolene'' won an

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

Literature Award.

Bibliography

* ''Armadillo in the Grass'' (1968) * ''The Second Dune'' (1973) * ''Hannah's House'' (1975) * ''Now and Another Time'' (1976) * ''A Prince of a Fellow'' (1978) * ''Barbara Jordan, a self portrait'' (1979) * ''Painted Dresses'' (1981) * ''Afternoon of a Faun'' (1983) * ''Group Therapy'' (1984) * ''A Small Town'' (1985) * ''500 Scorpions'' (1986) * ''Owning Jolene'' (1989) * ''Hug Dancing'' (1991) * ''Life Estates'' (1994) * ''Footprints'' (1996) * ''Ella in Bloom'' (2001) * ''Year of the Dog'' (2007)

References

External links

Shelby Heardon 1931-2016

from The Borzoi Reader
"Laying It All Out: Shelby Hearon Makes an Art of the Little White Lie"
in the ''Austin Chronicle''

* ttp://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00055.xml Inventory of Hearon's papers at Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
Addition to inventory of Hearon's papers at Harry Ransom Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hearon, Shelby 1931 births 2016 deaths 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists American women short story writers University of Texas at Austin alumni Novelists from Kentucky People from Marion, Kentucky 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers