Wright Morris

Wright Marion Morris (January 6, 1910 – April 25, 1998) was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist.

He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.

Morris was born in Central City, Nebraska; his boyhood home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

His mother, Grace Osborn Morris, died six days after he was born.

His father, William Henry Morris, worked for the Union Pacific Railroad.

After Grace's death, Wright was cared for by a nanny, until his father made a trip to Omaha and returned with a young wife, Gertrude.

In Will's Boy, Morris states, "Gertrude was closer to my age than to my father's".

Gertrude hated small-town life, but got along famously with Wright, as they shared many of the same childish tastes (both loved games, movies, and ice cream).

In 1919, the family moved to Omaha, where they resided until 1924.

During that interlude, Morris spent two summers on his uncle's farm near Norfolk, Nebraska.

Photographs of the farm, as well as the real-life characters of Uncle Harry and Aunt Clara, appear in Morris's books.

Morris moved to Chicago in 1924.

Later that year, he accompanied his father on a road trip to the west coast that formed the basis for his first novel, My Uncle Dudley.

He also lived briefly with his uncle in Texas before enrolling in Pacific Union College in California.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries houses a collection of Wright Morris papers, including material donated by Josephine Morris (1927-2002), widow of Wright Morris.

Wright Morris wrote about the places and lives he knew.

He graduated from Pomona College in 1933.

He married Mary Ellen Finfrock in 1934; the couple divorced in 1959.

He later married Josephine Mary Kantor.

Following college, Morris traveled through Europe on a "wanderjahr," which he later fictionalized in Cause for Wonder.

He was granted Guggenheim Fellowships in 1942, 1946, and 1954.

From 1944 to 1954, Morris lived in Philadelphia.

From 1954–1962, he divided his time between California and Mexico.

Morris won the National Book Award for The Field of Vision in 1956.

He also conducted a weekly correspondence with Scottish author Muriel Spark from 1962 until his death.

In 1963, he accepted a teaching position at San Francisco State College.

Morris developed close friendships with several other American authors, most notably John O'Hara and Thornton Wilder, and was a pall bearer at O'Hara's funeral in 1970.

He retired from teaching in 1975.

In 1975, he won the Mari Sandoz Award recognizing "significant, enduring contribution to the Nebraska book world".

In 1979, he received the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award.

His final novel, Plains Song won the American Book Award in 1981.

In 1981, he won the Los Angeles Times' Book Prize Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

In 1982, a jury of Modern Language Association members selected him for the Common Wealth Award for distinguished service in literature.

In 1985, he was one of the inaugural recipients of the Whiting Award.

In 1986, he was honored with a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The full archive of Wright Morris photographs is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of these photographs.

The Lincoln City Libraries of Lincoln, NE, houses some Morris correspondence and taped interviews in The Gale E. Christianson Collection of Eiseley Research Materials and The Wright Morris-Victor Musselman Correspondence collection.

Morris died of esophageal cancer in Mill Valley, California in 1998.

He is buried in the Chapman Cemetery.

Morris received numerous honors in addition to the National Book Awards for The Field of Vision and Plains Song.