Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen grew up on an Iowa farm in one of the last areas in the state to get electricity. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and graduated from eighth grade at age 12 before going on to college and then graduate school at the University of Iowa--and again at the University of Oregon. He is best known for his short-short stories The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap , Graywolf Press; You Know What is Right , North Point Press; The One-room Schoolhouse , Knopf; The Boys' House, Minnesota...See more

Jim Heynen grew up on an Iowa farm in one of the last areas in the state to get electricity. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and graduated from eighth grade at age 12 before going on to college and then graduate school at the University of Iowa--and again at the University of Oregon. He is best known for his short-short stories The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap , Graywolf Press; You Know What is Right , North Point Press; The One-room Schoolhouse , Knopf; The Boys' House, Minnesota Historical Society Press; and Ordinary Sins , Milkweed Editions). Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a recording of Heynen's stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission. Heynen has also published three novels ( The Fall of Alice K. , Milkweed Editions; Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice , YA, Henry Holt; Being Youngest , YA, Henry Holt), as well as several collections of poetry, including A Suitable Church , Copper Canyon Press and Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems , Confluence Press. He wrote prose vignettes for two photography books published by The University of Iowa Press, Harker's Barns and Sunday Afternoon on the Porch . His one major nonfiction book, One Hundred Over 100 , Fulcrum Publishers, featured 100 American centenarians. For many years he was writer in residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota See less