Description

About the Author

Paul Engle (1908-1991) won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize for Worn Earth in 1932, became a Rhodes Scholar in 1933, began to teach in the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1937, and directed the workshop from 1943 to 1966. In 1967, with his wife, the Chinese novelist Hauling Nieh Engle, he established the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He published eleven books of poems, a novel, books of reminiscences, children's stories, and an opera libretto.

Praise for A Lucky American Childhood…

"In reminiscences that portray a sort of classic midwestern childhood that no longer exists, and with great tenderness, Engle recounts incidents somehow remarkable for that particular time and place. In the early part of this century, in the heartland of the U.S., a child of little means was nurtured and cared for in ways that would allow him to pursue an education and to live a life defined by its creative spirit. A warm and lively memoir."—Choice

"What comes through is that [Engle's] poetic soul awakened and flourished thanks to a childhood blessed with the sensory, if not monetary, riches of his rural Midwest home."—New York Times Book Review