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American author (1936-2019)
Stephen Dixon (born Stephen Bruce Ditchik ; June 6, 1936 – November 6, 2019) was an American author of
novels and
short stories .
[1]
Life and career
Dixon was born on June 6, 1936, in
Manhattan ,
New York . He was the fifth of seven children of Florence Leder, a beauty queen, chorus girl on Broadway, and interior decorator, and Abraham M. Ditchik.
[1] He graduated from the
City College of New York in 1958 and was a faculty member of
Johns Hopkins University . Before becoming a full-time writer, Dixon worked a plethora of odd jobs ranging from bus driver to bartender. In his early 20s he worked as a journalist and in radio, interviewing such political figures as
John F. Kennedy ,
Richard Nixon and
Nikita Khrushchev .
[2]
Dixon was nominated for the
National Book Award twice, in 1991 for
Frog and in 1995 for
Interstate .
[3] Frog , at 860 pages, was his longest and most ambitious novel, and garnered reviews comparing the work favorably to
James Joyce 's Ulysses .
[4] He also was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship , the
American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the
O. Henry Award , and the
Pushcart Prize . He cited
Anton Chekhov ,
Samuel Beckett ,
Franz Kafka ,
Thomas Bernhard , and
James Joyce as some of his favorite authors.
Dixon died from complications of
Parkinson's disease at a hospice center in
Towson, Maryland , on November 6, 2019; he was 83.
[5]
Works
Novels
Work (Street Fiction Press, 1977)
Too Late (
Harper & Row , 1978)
Fall & Rise (
North Point Press , 1985)
Garbage (Cane Hill Press, 1988)
Frog (British American Publishing, 1991)
Interstate (
Henry Holt , 1995)
Gould (Henry Holt, 1997)
30: Pieces of a Novel (Henry Holt, 1999)
Tisch (
Red Hen Press , 2000) (his first completed novel, written 1961–1969)
I. (
McSweeney's , 2002)
Old Friends (
Melville House Publishing , 2004)
Phone Rings (
Melville House Publishing , 2005)
End of I. (McSweeney's, 2006)
Meyer (
Melville House Publishing , 2007)
Story of a Story and Other Stories: A Novel (
Fugue State Press ), 2012
His Wife Leaves Him (
Fantagraphics Books ), 2013
Letters to Kevin (
Fantagraphics Books ), 2016
Beatrice (
Publishing Genius ), 2016
Story collections
No Relief (Street Fiction Press, 1976)
Quite Contrary: The Mary and Newt Story (Harper & Row, 1979)
14 Stories (Johns Hopkins, 1980)
Movies: Seventeen Stories (North Point Press, 1983)
Time to Go (Will and Magna Stories) (Johns Hopkins, 1984)
The Play and Other Stories (
Coffee House Press , 1988)
Love and Will: Twenty Stories (
Paris Review Editions / British American Publishing, 1989)
All Gone: 18 Short Stories (Johns Hopkins, 1990)
Friends: More Will and Magna Stories (Asylum Arts, 1990)
Long Made Short (Johns Hopkins, 1994)
The Stories of Stephen Dixon (Henry Holt, 1994)
Man on Stage: Play Stories (Hi Jinx Press, 1996)
Sleep (
Coffee House Press , 1999)
The Switch (Rain Taxi, 1999) (a single story; Rain Taxi Brainstorm Series, Number 3)
What Is All This?: The Uncollected Stories of Stephen Dixon (
Fantagraphics Books , 2010)
Late Stories (
Trnsfr Books , 2016)
[6]
[7] Dear Abigail and Other Stories (
Trnsfr Books , 2019)
Writing, Written (
Fantagraphics Books , 2019)
References
^
a
b Smith, Harrison (November 6, 2019).
"Stephen Dixon, prolific writer of experimental, unsettling fiction, dies at 83" . The Washington Post . Retrieved November 7, 2019 .
^
The End of U: Novelist Stephen Dixon Talks Writing, Reading, And Retiring From Johns Hopkins
Archived February 9, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine Baltimore City Paper, February 7, 2007
^
Professor Dixon broke it down with Richard Nixon The Johns Hopkins Newsletter, October 4, 2002
^
Frog Publishers Weekly, January 30, 1995
^ Smith, Harrison (November 6, 2019).
"Stephen Dixon, prolific writer of experimental, unsettling fiction, dies at 83" .
The Washington Post . Retrieved November 6, 2019 .
^
Kirkus Review of Late Stories , July 20, 2016
^ Dear Abigail was published on 2/5/19. Writing Written was published on 2/26/19.
External links
International National People Other