Discipline: Literature

John Humphreys

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1950, 1951
J. R. Humphreys (1918-2003) was an author of fiction and nonfiction who founded a writers' program at Columbia University's School of General Studies. A native of Mancelona, Mich., Humphreys returned there and wrote a descriptive nonfiction book, The Last of the Middle West, which was published in 1966. His novel Subway to Samarkand, published in 1977, was a Notable Books of the Year selection of The New York Times Book Review. He wrote a half-dozen books in all, and was also a literary consultant to the Doubleday publishing house. He worked at Columbia for four decades, from 1946, as a member of the English department, director of the School of General Studies creative writing program and senior lecturer. His pupils included the publisher Samuel Vaughan and the author Evan S. Connell. He received a bachelor's degree in 1940 from the University of Michigan, and served in Britain and France in the Army Signal Corps during World War II.

Studios

Wood

John Humphreys worked in the Wood studio.

Wood Studio, given to the residency program by Mrs. Frederick Trevor Hill, was completed in 1913 in memory of Mrs. Hill’s mother, Helen Ogden Wood. Like Schelling Studio, the building is sided with large, overlapping pieces of hemlock bark. When the studio was renovated in 1995, MacDowell staff researched the origins of this unusual building material and…

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