Curtis White papers

Born in 1951 in San Lorenzo, California, social critic, essayist, and novelist Curtis White has authored five novels [The Idea Of Home (1992), Anarcho-Hindu (1995), Memories of My Father Watching TV (1998), Requiem (2001), and America's Magic Mountain (2004)], four non-fiction books [Monstrous Possibility (1998), The Middle Mind (2003), The Spirit of Disobedience (2007), The Barbaric Heart:Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature (2009)], two collections of short stories [Heretical Songs (1980), and Metaphysics in the Midwest (1988)], four edited/co-edited works, and numerous articles and essays. His work has been widely excerpted and anthologized.

White received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy from the University of San Francisco in 1973, and was a California Scholar from 1969 through 1973. As a Words and Ideas Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, White received his Masters in English in 1974. White began the English Ph.D. program at University of Iowa in 1975. While there, he worked on his doctoral dissertation with Vance Bourjaily in the Writers Workshop and was a Graduate College Fellow; White received Ph.D. in 1979. Since 1980, White has been a professor of English at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He has also been the Managing Director of FC2/Black Ice Books Press, Editor of Context, a forum for Literary Arts and Culture, and President of the Center for Book Culture/Dalkey Archive Press. White is married to Georganne Rundblad, author and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Illinois Wesleyan University.