12 Facts About Larry Woiwode

Larry Alfred Woiwode was an American writer from North Dakota, where he was the state's Poet Laureate from 1995 until his death.

Larry Woiwode's work appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Gentleman's Quarterly, The Partisan Review and The Paris Review.

Larry Woiwode was the author of five novels; two collections of short stories; a commentary titled "Acts"; a biography of the Gold Seal founder and entrepreneur, Harold Schafer, Aristocrat of the West; a book of poetry, Even Tide; and reviews and essays and essay-reviews that appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post Book World.

Larry Woiwode received North Dakota's highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, in 1992.

Larry Woiwode further received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters - in 1980 the Arts and Letters Award and in 1995 the Award of Merit Medal, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction.

Larry Woiwode published two dozen stories in The New Yorker.

Larry Woiwode returned to New York state after the death of John Gardner, and took Gardner's position as director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University; he was a tenured full professor there, besides directing the Creative Writing Program.

Larry Woiwode spent several years living and working on short stories and his third novel in the Chicago area before returning to North Dakota in 1978, where he lived twelve miles outside Mott and raised registered quarterhorses.

Larry Woiwode's work has been translated into a dozen languages, and Johnathan Yardley of The Washington Post Book World named Beyond the Bedroom Wall one of the 20 best novels of the 20th Century.

Larry Woiwode published a dozen books in a variety of genres, six of which have been named notable books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.

Larry Woiwode taught at the University of Jamestown and in 2020 was appointed Writer in Residence at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he lectured and taught until his death.

Larry Woiwode died in Bismarck, North Dakota after a short illness on April 28,2022, at age 80.