Hildebrand, John 1949–

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HILDEBRAND, John 1949–

PERSONAL:

Born May 18, 1949, in Royal Oak, MI; son of George V. (a salesman) and Rosemary (a teacher) Hildebrand; married first wife, 1972 (marriage ended, 1982); married Sharon O'Neill (an art teacher and researcher), August 10, 1984; children: Margaret, Rachel, Jack. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1971; University of Alaska, M.F.A., 1974. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Eau Claire, WI. Office—University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, Department of English, Eau Claire, WI 54701. Agent—Beth Vesel, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc., 55 5th Ave., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator, and naturalist. University of Alaska, Fairbanks, instructor in English, 1974-76; University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, assistant professor of English, beginning 1977. Served as writer/naturalist aboard research vessel Alpha Helix, 1989.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Friends of American Writers Award and Outstanding Achievement Award from Wisconsin Library Association, both 1988, both for Reading the River; William Sloan Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, 1988; Outstanding Achievement Recognition, Wisconsin Library Association, 1990, for Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon; Lake Superior Contemporary Writing Series Prose Award, 1990; Wordsmith Award, Milwaukee Journal, 1993; Bush Artist Fellowship, 1994; Maxwell Schoenfeld Distinguished Professorship and Excellence in Scholarship Award, University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire; Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship; Banta Award, Wisconsin Literary Association, for Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family.

WRITINGS:

Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon, Houghton (New York, NY), 1988.

Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

A Northern Front: New and Selected Essays, Borealis Books (St. Paul, MN), 2005.

Contributor to anthologies, including Nature's New Voices, 1992; The Great Land: Reflections on Alaska, 1994; American Nature Writing 1997; Best American Sports Writing 1999; and Barnstorm: Contemporary Wisconsin Fiction, 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Audubon, Outside, Harper's, Sports Illustrated, Manoa, Harrowsmith, and Missouri Review. Hildebrand's writings have been translated into German and Italian.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and naturalist John Hildebrand is also a professor of English. As a naturalist, he has a keen interest in the interaction of people with the environment, so Hildebrand's works center on the stories inherent in the outdoors and humans' place within it. In Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, for example, Hildebrand tells the multigenerational story of a farming family—his in-laws the O'Neils in Rochester, MN. He relates how Irish immigrants William and Catherine O'Neil settled in Rochester in 1880, and how they made a living working the land. Hildebrand follows more than a century of rural life and agricultural labor on the farm, including the hardships and strenuous labor required to run the farm in its early years; the pre-World War I glory days of American agriculture; the troubles brought on by the Great Depression; the gradual adoption of mechanized tools and implements; and his own entry into the O'Neil's farm circle. Hildebrand's story closes in the 1990s, when grandson Ed is the only full-time farmer left on O'Neil land, and the family farm's future is in doubt because of the unwillingness of another generation to assume the risks, responsibilities, and labors required to run it. In his "engrossing story," Hildebrand offers a "memorable picture of rural society, of a family and community" held together by faith and love of the land, noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Booklist reviewer Alice Joyce commented that Hildebrand's "beautifully written chronicle" not only celebrates the determination and strength of the O'Neil family, but also illustrates the "changing realities of working a farm."

A Northern Front: New and Selected Essays contains a collection of eighteen essays written by Hildebrand over a twenty-year period. The works "present glimpses of landscapes and the people who populate them," observed Rebecca Maksel in Booklist. Hildebrand "proves as adept at unearthing the compelling human story as he is at penetrating nature's subtleties," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. In the essays, Hildebrand reminisces about his past life, considers the fragility and beauty of nature, and laments the sedentary life that keeps most Americans from exploring the wonders around them. He accompanies a group of Hmong immigrants on a deer hunt in Wisconsin; he travels along Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River on Michigan's upper peninsula, using Hemingway's own works as a guidebook; he reflects on his past as he returns to a remote Alaskan cabin he built with his young wife in the early 1970s, and muses on the marriage that ended when their premature baby died during birth; he travels the Wisconsin prairie that comforted the dying Thoreau during the writer's last days. The Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that Hildebrand offers "[l]iterate prose and a naturalist's sensibility: a better tour guide would be hard to imagine."

Hildebrand once told CA: "I am interested in the way people relate to the natural world, especially since we've disassembled most of the ritual apparatus for doing so."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, June 1, 1995, Alice Joyce, review of Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, p. 1723; April 1, 2005, Rebecca Maksel, review of A Northern Front: New and Selected Essays, p. 1328.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2005, review of A Northern Front, p. 400.

Publishers Weekly, May 8, 1995, review of Mapping the Farm, p. 277.