Douglas H. Thayer

Douglas H. Thayer (April 19, 1929 – October 17, 2017) was a prominent author in the "faithful realism" movement of Mormon fiction.

He has been called the "Mormon Hemingway" for his straightforward style and powerful prose.

Eugene England called him the "father of contemporary Mormon fiction."

Thayer was born in Salt Lake City 1929.

His single mother raised him in Provo, Utah, where he spent his boyhood running free and hunting, fishing, and hiking in the surrounding Wasatch Mountains.

Thayer grew up in Provo, Utah, and dropped out of high school to join the army in 1946.

He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Germany.

He studied at Brigham Young University (BYU) for a bachelor's degree in English and received a Master's in American literature from Stanford.

He also received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa.

He dropped out of high school in 1946 to join the U.S. Army, serving in Germany.

He later returned to Germany as a missionary for LDS Church.

After graduating from BYU with a bachelor's degree in English, Thayer applied to law school, but then decided not to attend and started a doctorate in American literature at Stanford.

Finding that he had little interest in research, he left the program after finishing a master's degree.

Returning to Provo from Stanford, Thayer taught briefly in the BYU English Department, considered studying to be a clinical psychologist, and then started a doctorate in American studies at the University of Maryland.

His dislike of research led him to pursue his interest in writing.

He transferred to the University of Iowa, and finished an MFA in fiction writing.

In the 1960s, Thayer started to publish short stories in BYU Studies and Dialogue.

Thayer began publishing stories in BYU Studies and Dialogue during the 1960s.

Thayer's writing process consisted of writing a draft from notes, then taking more notes during the draft and incorporating these notes into subsequent drafts.

A short story went through over ten drafts, while a novel took between six and eight drafts.

Thayer is perhaps best-known for his coming-of-age stories.

Andrew Hall, a frequent blogger and secretary for the Association for Mormon Letters, called him the "finest chronicler of the Mormon youth in the culture."

Richard Cracroft called his memoir Hooligan a future classic of Mormon literature.

Michael Austin, a former English professor at University of Evansville and regular contributor to By Common Consent, described Thayer as the first LDS writer to bridge the gap between "coming from a position of faith" and writing "well-crafted" literature.

Scott Hales, a specialist in Mormon literature, noted that Thayer's short stories usually explore the "fragile psyche of Mormon men" who wear their gender roles "like an ill-fitting shirt."

In 1974, Karl Keller praised Thayer for using "concrete, worldly symbols" to articulate his faith, but stated that his work did not go as far as creating a world where Mormon theology was "concretely true."

He won the 1977 Short Story Award for stories in Under the Cottonwoods and the Short Fiction Award in 2011 for Wasatch.

His first novel, Summer Fire, was published in 1983.

Critics with the Mormon fiction movement praise Thayer's literary coming-of-age stories and their exploration of the Mormon masculine psyche.

His work has received multiple awards from the Association of Mormon Letters (AML) and other organizations, and he received lifetime achievement awards from AML and the Whitney Awards.

He was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints his whole life, and had six children with his wife, Donlu.

He received the Novel Award for Summer Fire in 1983 and for The Conversion of Jeff Williams in 2003.

In 1987, Bruce W. Jorgensen, an English professor at BYU, postulated that Thayer's stories in Under the Cottonwoods followed a consistent pattern taken from Romantic lyric poetry, where the story follows "a male protagonist through some brief, decisive interval in his life."

His prizes and awards for his work include Dialogue prizes for the short story and essay, the P. A. Christensen award, the Karl G. Maeser Creative Arts Award, and the Utah Institute of Fine Arts Award in the Short Story.

He taught fiction writing at BYU for fifty-four years and retired in 2011.

After completing his MFA, Thayer returned to BYU, where he taught fiction writing and other classes for fifty-four years before retiring in 2011.

At BYU he was Coordinator of Composition, Director of Creative Writing, Associate Chair in the English Department, and Associate Dean of the College of Humanities.

As a teacher, Thayer influenced John Bennion, Levi S. Peterson, Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, and Brandon Mull.

He received the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Whitney Awards.

Thayer has received many awards from the Association for Mormon Letters (AML).