Diana Farnham O'Hehir (May 23, 1922 – January 19, 2021) was a
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and writer of prose from
northern California
Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...
.
Biography
She was born in
Lexington in 1922, though she moved to
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
with her father the next year.
She taught from 1961 to 1992 at
Mills College
Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...
in
Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
where she was Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Professor Emerita of American Literature. She was married three times, twice to the same man, who she remarried 35 years after their divorce, after her marriage to her second husband, and their later divorce. She outlived both husbands, and died at the age of 98 in 2021, having published five novels and five collections of poetry.
She first married her first husband, Mel Fiske, a writer and progressive who she met in
Washington D.C.
)
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
while organizing for the
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of ...
in 1946, and they had one son together. However, they eventually divorced, as the politics of the McCarthy era made O'Hehir wish to move away from their leftist political stances, while Fiske was committed to this political cause, as she recounted to the Marin Independent Journal in 2005 in an article about her most recent books. In 1956, she was remarried, to Brendan O'Hehir, with whom she had another son, and she lived with O'Hehir until they divorced in 1986. Shortly after this, she reconnected with Fiske, as recounted in a 1999 essay in
salon.com
''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events.
Content and coverage
''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...
.
If at first...
/ref> O'Hehir and Fiske lived together until Fiske's death, in 2008.
Though not the most prolific, her works have been highly regarded by critics, with several receiving awards.
Works
*''Summoned'' (poetry), 1976
*''The Power to Change Geography'' (poetry), 1979
*''I Wish This War Were Over '' (novel), 1984
*''Home Free'' (poetry), 1988
*''The Bride Who Ran Away'' (novel), 1988
*''Mothersongs: Poems For, By, and About Mothers'' (anthology edited with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar), 1995
*''Spells For Not Dying Again'' (poetry), 1996
*''Murder Never Forgets'' (novel), 2005
*''Erased from Memory'' (novel), 2006
*''Dark Aura'' (novel), 2008
Awards
*''Summoned'': Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press, 1976.
*''I Wish This War Were Over'', was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
.
*Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1986.
*''Spells For Not Dying Again'' Northern California Book Award for poetry, 1997.
References
External links
Official author site
Official site for her mystery novels
Q&A from the same site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohehir, Diana
1922 births
2021 deaths
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
American women novelists
American women poets
Mills College faculty
Poets from California
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
20th-century American poets
21st-century American poets
Poets from Virginia
People from Lexington, Virginia
American women academics