MICHAELS, Leonard 1933-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 2, 1933, in New York, NY; died of complications from lymphoma May 10, 2003, in Berkeley, CA. Educator and author. Michaels was an acclaimed short-story author who was also well known for his first novel, The Men's Club. Originally interested in art in high school, he switched to pre-med when he enrolled at New York University, but eventually changed his course of study to English. He completed his under-graduate work in 1953, moving on to earn a master's degree at the University of Michigan in 1956 and a doctorate there in 1966. Always interested in writing, especially short stories, which he believed to be the best form of fiction, he began earning money as a freelance writer in the early 1960s. Although his first story was published in Playboy, he would later make a name for himself in literary journals such as Three-penny Review and the New Yorker. Michaels also enjoyed teaching, beginning as an instructor at William Paterson State College from 1961 to 1962, moving on to the University of California at Davis during the late 1960s, and joining the Berkeley faculty as a professor of English in 1970, where he remained until he retired in 1994. By the mid-1960s Michaels was already attracting attention as a writer, winning Quill awards from the Massachusetts Review in 1964 and 1966 for his short fiction. His first collection of short stories, Going Places (1969), was nominated for a National Book Award, and his second collection, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could (1975), was also highly acclaimed by critics. The Men's Club (1981), for which he wrote a movie adaptation released in 1986, is his best-known novel; it was nominated for the American Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. More recently, Michaels wrote the short-story collections Shuffle (1990) and A Girl with a Monkey: New and Selected Stories (2000), as well as Sylvia: A Fictional Memoir (1992), To Feel These Things: Essays (1993), and Time out of Mind: The Diaries of Leonard Michaels, 1961-1995 (1999), among other publications. Though never a prolific author, Michaels was regularly praised for the quality of his prose, and his work earned him the O. Henry Prize, the American Academy Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities prize.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Novelists, seventh edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Writers Directory, 18th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, May 15, 2003, section 1, p. 11.

Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2003, p. B11.

New York Times, May 13, 2003, p. A29.

Times (London, England), June 17, 2003.