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===Education===
===Education===
Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925. He attended [[Swarthmore College]], where he played [[basketball]], and joined the [[Phi Delta Theta]] fraternity. He graduated with highest honors. He attended [[University of Northern Colorado|Colorado State Teachers College]] (now named the University of Northern Colorado in [[Greeley, Colorado|Greeley]], [[Colorado]]), and earned his master's degree.
Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925. He attended [[Swarthmore College]], where he played [[basketball]], and joined the [[Phi Delta Theta]] fraternity. He graduated with highest honors. He attended [[University of Northern Colorado|Colorado State Teachers College]] (now named the University of Northern Colorado in [[Greeley, Colorado|Greeley]], [[Colorado]]), and earned his master's degree


===Writing career===
===Writing career===

Revision as of 14:11, 2 October 2008

James A. Michener
OccupationNovelist
Short story writer
GenreHistorical Fiction

James Albert Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which are novels of sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in a particular geographic locale and incorporating historical facts into the story as well. Michener was known for the meticulous research behind his work.

Michener's major books include Tales of the South Pacific (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948), Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, The Fires of Spring, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Caravans, Alaska, Texas, and Poland. His nonfiction works include his 1968 Iberia about his travels in Spain and Portugal, his 1992 memoir The World is My Home, and Sports in America.

Biography

Michener wrote that he did not know who his parents were or exactly when or where he was born. He was raised a Quaker by an adoptive mother, Mabel Michener, in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

After graduating summa cum laude in 1929 from Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree in English and history, he traveled and studied in Europe for two years. Michener then took a job as a high school English teacher at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He later taught English at George School, in Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1933-36, then attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), earned his master's degree, and taught there for several years. The library at the University of Northern Colorado is named for him. In 1935 Michener married Patti Koon. He went to Harvard for a one-year teaching stint from 1939-1940 and left teaching to join Macmillan Publishers as their social studies education editor.

Michener was called to active duty during World War II in the United States Naval Reserve. He traveled with the Navy to the South Pacific, which became the setting for his breakout work Tales of the South Pacific.

In 1960, Michener was chairman of the Bucks County committee to elect John F. Kennedy, and subsequently, in 1962, ran for the United States Congress, a decision he later considered a misstep. "My mistake was to run in 1962 as a Democrat candidate for Congress. [My wife] kept saying, "Don't do it, don't do it." I lost and went back to writing books."

Education

Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925. He attended Swarthmore College, where he played basketball, and joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He graduated with highest honors. He attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), and earned his master's degree

Writing career

Michener's writing career began during World War II, when, as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to the South Pacific Ocean as a naval historian; he later turned his notes and impressions into Tales of the South Pacific, his first book, which was the basis for the Broadway and film musical South Pacific. It was published when he was 40.

In the late 1950s, Michener began working as a roving editor for Readers Guide. He gave up that work in 1970.

Michener was a popular writer during his lifetime and his novels sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide [1]. His novel Hawaii (published in 1959) was based on extensive historical research. Nearly all of his subsequent novels were based on detailed historical, cultural, and even geological research. Centennial, which documented several generations of families in the West, was made into a popular twelve part television miniseries of the same name that aired on NBC from October 1978 through February 1979.

In 1996, State House Press published "James A. Michener: A Bibliography" compiled by David A. Groseclose. It contains more than 2,500 entries from 1923 to 1995 including magazine articles, forewords, books and other works.

His prodigious output made for lengthy novels, several of which run more than 1,000 pages. The author states in My Lost Mexico that at times he would spend 12 to 15 hours per day at his typewriter for weeks on end and that he used so much paper his filing system had trouble keeping up.

Spouses

He was married three times. His second wife was Vange Nord (married in 1948). Michener met his third wife Mari Yoriko Sabusawa at a luncheon in Chicago and they were married in 1955 (the same year as his divorce from Nord). His novel Sayonara is pseudo-autobiographical.

Charity

Michener gave away a great deal of the money he earned, contributing more than $100 million to universities, libraries, museums, and other charitable causes.

Awards

In 1948, Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Tales of the South Pacific.

On January 10, 1977, Michener was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Gerald R. Ford.

In 2008, Michener was honored on a United States postage stamp.

Final years and death

In his final years, he lived in Austin, Texas, and, aside from being a prominent celebrity fan of the Texas Longhorns women's basketball team, he founded an MFA program now named the Michener Center for Writers.

In October 1997, Michener ended the daily dialysis treatment that had kept him alive for four years and as a result he soon died. He was 90 years old.

He was buried in Austin, Texas, and is honored by a monument at the Texas State Cemetery.

James A. Michener Art Museum

Opened in 1988 in Michener's hometown of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the James A. Michener Art Museum houses collections of local and well-known artists. The museum, constructed from the remains of the old prison, is a non-profit organization, with both permanent and rotating collections. Two prominent permanent fixtures are the James A. Michener display room and the Nakashima Reading Room, constructed in honor of his third wife's Japanese heritage. The museum is known for its permanent collection of Pennsylvania Impressionistic Paintings.

Works

In addition to novels, Michener was very involved with non-fiction, movies, TV show series and radio. This is only a major part of what is listed in the Library of Congress files. The category list would be very complex to add.

Books - Fiction

Books - Non-Fiction

  • The Voice of Asia (1951)
  • Rascals in Paradise (1957)
  • The Future of the Social Studies ("The Problem of the Social Studies") (1939) Editor
  • The Floating World (1954)
  • The Bridge at Andau (1957)
  • Japanese Prints: From the Early Masters to the Modern (1959)
  • Report of the County Chairman (1961)
  • The Modern Japanese Print: An Appreciation (1968)
  • Iberia (1968) travelogue
  • Presidential Lottery (1969)
  • The Quality of Life (1970)
  • Kent State: What Happened and Why (1971)
  • Michener Miscellany - 1950/1970 (1973)
  • Sports in America (1976)
  • About Centennial: Some Notes on the Novel (1978)
  • James A Michener's USA: The People and the Land (1981)
  • Collectors, Forgers - And A Writer: A Memoir (1983)
  • Michener Anthology (1985)
  • Six Days in Havana (1989)
  • Pilgrimage: A Memoir of Poland and Rome (1990)
  • The World is My Home (1992) Michener's autobiography.
  • Creatures of the Kingdom (1993)
  • Literary Reflections (1993)
  • William Penn (1994)
  • Ventures in Editing (1995)
  • Three Great Novels of World War II (1996)
  • A Century of Sonnets (1997)

Movies, TV and Radio

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to James A. Michener.
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