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Vol. 18, No. 22 |
March 4, 1999 |
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Vol. 18, No. 22 |
March 4, 1999 |
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Cruce Stark, English, has received a Ragsdale Foundation/National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, in "recognition of the outstanding quality of his writing."
The fellowship will provide a month's summer stay at the Ragsdale Foundation artists' community on the grounds of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw's "arts and craft style" home in Lake Forest, Ill. A noted writer of fiction, Stark will share his residency with two other authors, a visual artist and poet.
A graduate of Southern Methodist University with a doctorate from Harvard, Stark came to UD in 1969 and began writing fiction seriously in 1976. He was voted "Best Writer" in 1996 in the "Best of Delaware" rankings, sponsored by Delaware Today magazine.
Stark's father-in-law, a rancher in southern Texas, and his tall tales inspired him to write his best known work, Chasing Uncle Charlie, published in 1992, which he describes as a "bizarre, psychological western." It centers on the quest of a 17-year-old youth sent to find Uncle Charlie, a fugitive because of a killing.
A reviewer in The New York Times, wrote, "But it's Cruce Stark's characters who make Bo's coming of age in this accomplished first novel linger in the memory; constantly in motion, ranging across landscapes either bleak or weirdly beautiful, tangled in a variety of violent alliances, speaking a wonderfully laconic, droll prose, they are believably strange and surprising."
A reviewer in the Fort Worth Star Telegram wrote of Stark, "He is a precise student of his craft and a brilliant executor of what might truly be called one of the best 'literary westerns.'
Stark has completed another novel, Nighttime in the City. Set in New York City, the book is a combination of Kafka and Buster Keaton, he said.
Stark, who teaches American literature and a fiction-writing workshop at UD, is working on a novel set in pre-revolutionary Nicaragua, with the working title, Catching the Bus to Columbia.
Stark said he is looking forward to the summer experience. "They provide you with everything you need and then they leave you alone to write, which is good for an anti-social author," he said.
