Curtis Harnack

Curtis Harnack, born in 1927, son of an Iowa farmer, began his education in a one-room schoolhouse; B.A. Grinnell, M.A. Columbia, Litt. D. Grinnell. He is author of three related novels portraying rural Iowa and small-town life at mid-twentieth century: The Work of an Ancient Hand (1960, Harcourt); Love And Be Silent (1962, Harcourt); Limits of the Land (1979, Doubleday). His acclaimed memoir of childhood, We Have All Gone Away (1973, Doubleday) has been continuously in print for three decades. A sequel, The Attic: A Memoir (Iowa State U. Press, 1993) completes the account of his growing-up years. Under My Wings Everything Prospers (1977, Doubleday) consists of six short stories and a novella. Persian Lions, Persian Lambs (1965, Holt) describes a year of teaching in Tabriz, Iran, as a Fulbright professor of American literature. Gentlemen on the Prairie (1985, Iowa State U. Press) relates the history of a colony of wealthy British settlers who attempted to re-create Victorian England on the Midwestern prairie. Link: Special Collections, University of Iowa Library.

Harnack's first adult job was at the United Nations Secretariat as a collator of documents, 1951-52. He taught English at Grinnell, 1952-56; at the Iowa Writers Workshop, 1957-58 and again, 1959-60. With Paul Engle he co-edited the O. Henry Collection, Prize Stories, 1958 and 1959 (Doubleday). For the decade of the 1960s he was on the literature faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, where he co-founded the American Studies program. From 1971-87 he was president of Yaddo, the artists colony in Saratoga Springs, New York; and from 1992-97 he was president of the School of American Ballet, the training academy of the New York City Ballet. He has lived for periods in England, France, and Italy, as well as Iran. Under State Department auspices, in 1979 he toured Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania lecturing on American literature; and on a U.S./China Arts Exchange program in 1986, he traveled to China. A resident of New York City, married to writer Hortense Calisher, he also lives in upstate New York; and he is a frequent visitor to Iowa, where he continues to own part of the family farm.