Robert Ward biography

Robert Ward was born in Baltimore in 1943. In his senior year in college he wrote a short story which won a school literary prize called "The Value of Evolon."

After getting his MFA degree Ward got a job teaching at Miami University-Hamilton Campus in Hamilton Ohio. He had finished re-writing his novel, Shedding Skin, about his travels, and lunatic adventures, and it was accepted for publication by Harper and Row in 1968. Upon hearing of an opening for a teaching job at Hobart and William Smith College, Ward sent his novel to the head of the creative writing program, James Crenner. Crenner wrote him back saying that he thought the book was one of the greatest novels he'd ever read, and invited him to Geneva for an interview. Though his novel came out and won an NEA Grant as one of the best novels published in 1972, his attempt at a second book was a disaster, and he began to take opiates and drink whiskey to dull the pain of his total and his absolute failure of nerve.

Ward, trashed and depressed, realized that he would never be an academic, and his only chance for survival was to get to New York City and become a journalist. He managed this feat by hanging out with the local cops for a piece which he then sold to New Times Magazine. He also wrote for GQ, Rolling Stone and many other magazines after quitting teaching and moving to New York City.

Meanwhile, at night he finished his second novel Cattle Annie and Little Britches, sold it to the movies and wrote the script which a few years later was made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Diane Lane and Burt Lancaster. Once in New York, Ward felt as though he was living the real life of a real writer, and as a result all his work blossomed. Cattle Annie led to other movie assignments, the journalist gigs came fast and furious, and Ward eventually fell in love with Celeste Wesson, a beautiful and brilliant blonde from WBAI radio. She moved to Washington DC, and Ward suffered another breakdown after writing a book for five years which came to nothing. Finally, when all hope seemed lost, Ward found the right voice for his new novel, Red Baker, and began to start all over again. In nine months he had his best book ever, but it was turned down by all thirty one publishers it was submitted to.

Three weeks later his agent, Jay Acton, sent the book to editor, Joyce Johnson, Jack Kerouac's ex-girlfriend and herself a fine novelist and essayist. She bought the book for Dial Press. It was published, received rave reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Village Voice. Eventually, it won the Pen West Award as the best Novel Published in 1985 in the United States.,

In 1991 Ward had his second son, Robert Wesson Ward, and for the following 18 years he took care of his boy and wrote three more novels, one of which "Four Kinds of Rain" was called a comic masterpiece by Michael Connelly, and was a New York Times notable book of the year. Ward has also acted in his western Brotherhood of the Gun, and played himself in the ESPN mini series The Bronx Is Burning, a film which was in part based on his famous Sport magazine piece on Reggie Jackson. Ward is now in talks with producers about doing 'Rain' as a movie. And there has recently been interest in re-making Cattle Annie and Little Britches.

All Robert Ward Reviews