Charles Alfonso Kinder II (October 8, 1946 – May 3, 2019) was an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

Biography

Kinder was born October 8 in Montgomery, West Virginia to Charles Alfonso and Eileen Reba (Parsons) Kinder. He was educated at

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State College ...

(BA, MA) and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(

Stegner Fellowship The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford faculty mem ...

). After teaching at Stanford and Waynesburg College, Kinder was a professor of English at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

, where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2014. At Stanford, Kinder became close friends with fellow students Raymond Carver and

Scott Turow Scott Frederick Turow (born April 12, 1949) is an American author and lawyer. Turow has written 13 fiction and three nonfiction books, which have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. Turow’s novel ...

, and Stegner alumnus

Larry McMurtry Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas.

. His relationship with Carver inspired his 2001 novel ''Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale'', which for nearly twenty years had vexed Kinder and had grown, uncontrollably, into a sprawling manuscript of over 3,000 pages. Kinder's struggle with this manuscript was local legend at the

. Michael Chabon, once an undergraduate student of Kinder's, used it as inspiration for the character Grady Tripp in the 1995 novel '' Wonder Boys''. Kinder was married to Diane Cecily Blackmer. He died May 4, 2019, in Key Largo, Florida.

Novels

* ''Snakehunter'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973) * ''The Silver Ghost'' (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1979) * ''Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale'' (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001)

Creative Nonfiction

* ''Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life'', (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004)

Poetry

* ''Giant Night: The Secret Science of Angels and Aliens : The Poem as Memoir, Funerary Text, with Kitchen Sink'' (Pittsburgh: self-published, 2013) * ''Imagination Hotel'' (Pittsburgh: Six Gallery Press, 2014) * ''All That Yellow'' (Pittsburgh: Low Ghost Press, 2014) * ''Hot Jewels'' (Pittsburgh: Six Gallery Press, 2017)

Sources

''Contemporary Authors Online''. The Gale Group, 2003. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000150152.

References

External links

Kinder remembrance page on Pitt English Department Web site 1946 births 20th-century American novelists 2019 deaths People from Montgomery, West Virginia Stanford University alumni Stanford University faculty University of Pittsburgh faculty Waynesburg University faculty West Virginia University alumni Writers from Pittsburgh Novelists from West Virginia 21st-century American novelists American male novelists 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from Pennsylvania Stegner Fellows {{US-novelist-1940s-stub