Jay Parini
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“Jay Parini is one of those writers who can do anything. He belongs to the select league of literary pentathletes who must be their publishers’ despair: will the next book be poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, biography? As if his protean industry weren’t enough, Parini can even bend a genre or two.” – the New York Times
One of the country’s most talented and versatile writers, Jay Parini has produced an awing amount of notable work, from novels (“The Last Station” and “The Passages of H.M.”), poetry (“House of Days,” “Anthracite Country”), biography (“One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner,” “Robert Frost: A Life”), literary criticism (“Why Poetry Matters”) and academic writing (“The Art of Teaching,” “American Identities: Contemporary Multicultural Voices”).
He was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and brought up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1970 and was awarded a doctorate by the University of St. Andrews in 1975. He taught at Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1982, and has taught since 1982 at Middlebury College, where he is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing. Alongside the likes of Salman Rushdie and Harold Bloom, Parini is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college in Savannah with a decidedly innovative curriculum.
He is a regular contributor to various journals and newspapers, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Guardian (U.K.). In 1976, he co-founded New England Review with Sydney Lea. In 1995, he was appointed literary executor for author Gore Vidal. Parini’s 1990 novel “The Last Station” was adapted into an Oscar-winning film that was released in December 2009.
