John Yount ()Kay Callison, John Yount interview, May 1986: Part One, State Historical Society of Missouri, digitzed collections no. C3851. (born Boone, North Carolina, 3 July 1935) is an American novelist and academic. He is known for novels including Hardcastle (1980).

Life John Alonzo Yount was born in Boone, North Carolina, on 3 July 1935 to John Luther Yount and Vera née Sherwood.Matthew D. Mutter, "John Yount," in Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary, ed. Joseph M. Flora, Amber Vogel and Bryan Giemza (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006) (at Google Books).Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, vol. 47, ed. Pamela S. Dear (Detroit, NY : Gale Research Inc., 1995) p. 481. He served in the US Army Medical Corps from 1954 to 1956. His father's family was Lutheran while his mother's was Baptist.Robert Bain, "John Yount," in Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993). His paternal grandfather was a Lutheran pastor. Yount was schooled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Tennessee. After attending Wake Forest University from 1956 to 1957 (where his friends included Miller Williams and James Whitehead, both later poets), he graduated BA at Vanderbilt University in 1960 and MFA at Iowa State University in 1962, where he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Yount taught English and Creative Writing at Clemson University and the University of Arkansas. He then taught English at the University of New Hampshire, where he is now Professor Emeritus. At New Hampshire, Yount was a mentor to the novelist John Irving. In Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1993), Irving remembers Yount as "the first writer I was conscious of as a mentor."John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (London: Bloomsbury, 1993) (at Google Books). Yount recalled: "Other than maybe how to use a semicolon, I never taught him anything of value. … Nor has he to this day ever taken any advice from me, which is probably why he's famous."Jane Harrigan, "Becoming John Irving," University of New Hampshire Magazine (Fall 2005).

In 1957, he married Susan Childe. They divorced in 1986. They have two daughters. He later married fellow author Deborah Navas.Deborah Navas, Things We Lost, Gave Away, Bought High, and Sold Low: Stories (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1992), p. 137. In 1995, Yount was described as a Democrat and a Lutheran.

Reception Elmore Leonard named Hardcastle (1980) and Toots in Solitude (1984) "classics of the future."Alan Cheuse, "Classics of the Future," The Antioch Review, vol. 65, no. 2 (Spring 2007). Andre Dubus III calls Yount "a master novelist whom not nearly enough people have had the pleasure of reading." For Charles Simic, Yount is "[o]ne of the finest writers of prose in this country."RLR Associates International Rights List 2018.

Yount was profiled by James Whitehead for Ploughshares in 1974.James Whitehead, "About John Yount and the Trapper's Last Shot," Ploughshares, vol. 2, no. 2 (1974).

Recognition In 1981, he received a Friends of American Writers award for Hardcastle (1980).Friends of American Writers Award, librarything.com. He also received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (1967), the Guggenheim Foundation (1974) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1976)."Literature Fellowships," arts.gov.

Publications Novels Wolf at the Door. 1st ed. Random House, 1967. 2nd ed. Open Road, 2014. The Trapper's Last Shot. 1st ed. Random House, 1973. 2nd ed. Open Road, 2014. Hardcastle. 1st ed. Richard Marek, 1980. 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1992. 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. Toots in Solitude. 1st ed. St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984. 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1995. 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. Thief of Dreams. 1st ed. Viking Penguin, 1991. 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. Review "Walker Percy's Funhouse Mirror: More True than Distorted," Chicago Tribune (27 February 1977).Yount, J. 1977, Walker Percy's funhouse mirror: more true than distorted, Chicago, Ill.

References

External links Yount's University of New Hampshire profile Audio interview of Yount by Kay Callison