Librarian’s corner: Author Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison

The Manchester District Library will be highlighting a different author or topic each week. 

by Amelia Herron, Manchester District Library

Jim Harrison is an author originating from Grayling, Michigan. He graduated from Haslett High School in 1956. Unfortunately, tragedy struck eight years later, when his sister and father were killed in a car accident. He married his wife, Linda King, a year before he graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in comparative literature. The pair had two children together. The year after he received his MA in comparative literature, he was an assistant professor English at Stony Brook University, but after an accident while bird hunting left him blind in one eye, he left that position to become a full-time writer. Before he published any novels, he published three books of poetry. 

Many of his novels are set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Nebraska, Montana, and the Arizona-Mexico border. The characters in his novels tend to be born in rural settings, and they often have become accustomed to both the natural and “civilized” world. His best-known novels include A Good Day to Die, written in 1973; Dalva, written in 1988; and True North, written in 2004. Throughout his decades long career as a writer, he has written in a broad scope of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature. He wrote two darkly comedic detective novels in 2012 and 2015, deviating from his normal genre. Both of them were well received by critics. Some of Harrison’s work has been developed into movies, beginning with his book Legends of the Fall. He also wrote and co-wrote three other scripts, including Cold Feet, Revenge, and Wolf, all of which starred A-list actors. 

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.