Harry Crews  

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Harry Crews (June 7, 1935 - March 28, 2012) was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist. He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where Harry taught Junior High English for a year.

Harry returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Harry continued his studies, graduated, and - denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program - took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Harry convinced Sally to return to him, and they were re-married. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. He returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida. In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Harry and Sally were once again divorced.

His first published novel, The Gospel Singer, was released in 1968. His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, Karate Is A Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. He published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews has written essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called "Grits" for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting. Harry has a tattoo on his right arm that says How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings) beneath a skull.


The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment.

His ex-wife, Sally Ellis Crews, reported his March 28, 2012, death in Gainesville, after an illness.

In Popular Culture

  • Canadian pop band Men Without Hats has a song called "Harry Crews" on their 1991 album Sideways.
  • Crews was the subject of the first installment of the "Rough South" documentary series written and directed by Gary Hawkins. The film, entitled The Rough South of Harry Crews won a regional Emmy Award and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Gold Award in 1992.
  • Harry played a brief role in Sean Penn's The Indian Runner and dedicated his book Scar Lover to Penn.
  • In 2007, another documentary was released: Harry Crews - Survival is Triumph Enough. The personal format is loosely based on an interview with artist and filmmaker Tyler Turkle, and the themes explored include hardship, tragedy and loss throughout the Crews' life.
  • Kansas City band Season_to_Risk wrote and recorded a song on their first album in 1993, entitled "Snakes", which is inspired by the Crews novel "A Feast of Snakes"





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Harry Crews" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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