John Dalton is the author of the novel, Heaven Lake, winner of the Barnes and Noble 2004 Discover Award in fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a member of the English faculty at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he teaches in their MFA Writing Program. John lives with his wife and two daughters in St. Louis.
Biography
John Dalton was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of seven children. Upon graduation from college, he received a plane ticket to travel around the world, and so began an enduring interest in travel and foreign culture. During the late 1980s he lived in Taiwan for several years and traveled in Mainland China and other Asian countries. He attended the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the early 1990s and was awarded two fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown as well as a James Michener/Paul Engle Award for his (then) novel-in-progress, Heaven Lake. He presently lives with his wife in North Carolina.
Author biography courtesy of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Good To Know
Some interesting outtakes from our interview with Dalton: "I worked for several years at the Barnes & Noble in Ladue, Missouri."
"When I was 23 and graduated from college, my older brother gave me a plane ticket to travel around the world. I went to Hawaii, Fiji, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and then on to Europe, traveling mostly on my own."
"I had nothing to do with the invention of the periodic table."
"I play Frisbee golf as a hobby -- I once threw a hole-in-one."
