John Crowley

John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine. He taught himself to write blank verse, composed the beginnings of tragedies, and planned for a career in the theater. He went to Indiana University, where he dropped that idea, majored in English, and wrote poetry. He went to New York City where he planned to make films, wrote screenplays that were not produced, and began working on documentary films, mostly historical, using film and photographs from the past. He also began writing novels, beginning with a science fiction tale (The Deep, 1975). and sold it to a publisher for the sum of $1500. He then sold the same publisher another novel (Beasts, 1977). But he had also begun writing a much larger and odder piece of work, which was finished in 10 years. He moved to western Massachusetts where Little, Big was published in 1981. In the Berkshires he married and had twin daughters. In 1992, through the intervention of Yale professors, he started teaching creative writing as an adjunct and later a half-time instructor, from which he retired in the spring of 2018. He continues to write books and stories.