Ostrom, Hans 1954-

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OSTROM, Hans 1954-

PERSONAL: Born January 29, 1954, in Grass Valley, CA; son of Alex (a carpenter, stone mason, and gold miner) and Alice (a teacher; maiden name, Brady) Ostrom; married Jacquelyn Bacon (a fundraising consultant), July 18, 1983; children: Spencer. Education: Attended Sierra College, 1971-73; University of California, Davis, B.A., 1975, M.A., 1978, Ph.D., 1982. Politics: "Swedish socialist." Religion: Buddhist.

ADDRESSES: Home—Lakewood, WA. Offıce— Department of English, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner, Wyatt 336, Tacoma, WA 98416. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, visiting lecturer, 1980-81; University of California, Davis, assistant director of composition, 1981-82; University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, associate professor, 1983-2000, distinguished professor of English, 2000—, director of Center for Writing across the Curriculum, 1984-88. Member of editorial board, Writing on the Edge, 1990—; manuscript reviewer for publications such as Journal of Advanced Composition and College English, Publications of the Modern Language Association, and College English, and for publishers such as Boynton/Cook-Heinemann.

MEMBER: National Book Critics Circle, Mystery Writers of America, National Council of Teachers of English, Academy of American Poets, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Modern Language Association of America, Fulbright Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Regents Fellowship, University of California, Davis, 1977-78; Harvest Award for poetry, University of Houston, 1978, for "Spider Killing"; grand prize, Ina Coolbrith Memorial Awards, 1979, for "Elegy for a Distant Relative"; first prize, Warren Eyster Competition, New Delta Review, 1985, for "The Collector"; fiction prize from Redbook, 1985, for the story "Hostage in Residence;" teaching award for outstanding graduate students, University of California, Davis, 1982; Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award, University of Puget Sound, 1986, 1989; Martin Nelson Sabbatical Fellowship, 1987; Alumni Association's Citation for Excellence, University of California, Davis, 1989; J. William Fulbright Fellowship for Senior Lecturers, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, spring, 1994; John Lantz Fellowship, University of Puget Sound, 1996-97.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Linda A. Morris and Linda P. Young) The Living Language: A Reader (anthology), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1984.

(With Timothy J. Lulofs) Leigh Hunt: A ReferenceGuide, G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1985.

(Editor, with Mary T. Turnbull and Robert F. Garratt) Spectrum: A Reader, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1987.

(Compiler) Lives and Moments: An Introduction toShort Fiction (anthology), Holt, Rinehart & Winston (Fort Worth, TX) 1991.

Three to Get Ready (novel), Cliffhanger Press (Oakland, CA), 1991.

(With Wendy Bishop) Water's Night: Poems (chapbook), Mariposite Press (Grass Valley, CA), 1992.

Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Wendy Bishop) Colors of a DifferentHorse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy, National Council of Teachers of English (Urbana, IL), 1994.

(Editor, with Wendy Bishop) Genres of Writing: Issues, Arguments, Alternatives, Boynton/Cook-Heinemann (Portsmouth, NH), 1997.

(With Wendy Bishop and Katharine Haake) Metro: ASourcebook for Writing Creatively, Addison Wesley Longman (New York, NY), 2000.

Subjects Apprehended: Poems, Pudding House Press (Johnstown, OH), 2000.

A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2002.

(Editor, with Wendy Bishop) The Subject Is Story: Essays for Writers and Readers, Boynton/Cook-Heinemann (Portsmouth, NH), 2003.

Contributor to Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 106: British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1880, edited by Jonathan Rose and Patricia J. Anderson, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991; From These Hills: An Anthology of California Writers, edited by Judith Shears, Castle Peak Editions (Corvalis, OR), 1991; Essays in Honor of William Everson, edited by Bill Hotchkiss, Castle Peak Editions (Corvalis, OR), 1992; A Reference Guide to American Literature, edited by Thomas Riggs, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999; and Acts of Revision, edited by Wendy Bishop, Boynton/Cook-Heinemann (Portsmouth, NH), 2004. Author of book column, Morning News Tribune (Tacoma, WA).

Contributor of articles, stories, poems, and reviews to magazines and newspapers, including California Quarterly, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, AmericanPoetry, Cream City Review, Morning News Tribune (Tacoma, WA), Arches, Barbaric Yawp, Commonweal, Northern Review, Washington Post, and Willow Springs.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Editor, with J. David Macey, An Encyclopedia of African American Literature, five volumes, for Greenwood Press.

SIDELIGHTS: California native Hans Ostrom grew up surrounded by nature in his Sierra City home in the Sierra Nevada. "Bears, deer, raccoons, and rattlesnakes were often in our neighborhood, or we were in theirs," Ostrom wrote in an autobiography on his Internet home page. In this remote location (his grade school was twelve miles away), Ostrom read widely in literature and genre fiction, "reading novels by candlelight when winter storms knocked out electrical service," he wrote on his home page. From this background, Ostrom pursued poetry, fiction writing, and academics in the field of English. His scholarly interests include "composition studies, creative writing pedagogy, rhetoric, and African American literature."

In keeping with his interests, Ostrom is the author of two books on African American author Langston Hughes. In Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction, Ostrom presents a chronological analysis of the development of Hughes's short fiction. Ostrom focuses primarily on themes and thematic issues in Hughes's short stories, "but he remains alert to Hughes's relationship to literary and political movements" such as literary modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, commented J. A. Miller in Choice. The book includes excerpts from Hughes's essays, speeches, and autobiographies, with an eye toward establishing a sense of what Hughes thought of his own work. Ostrom also offers detailed surveys of articles, reviews, and criticism of Hughes's short works.

A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia is a "fascinating and ambitious" project featuring detailed descriptive entries, bibliographic citations, chronologies, and overviews of multiple aspects of Hughes's life and work, observed S. A. Vega Garcia in Choice. The book includes entries on Hughes's best-known poetry and fiction, but it also covers his more obscure and lesser-known works, including journalistic pieces, essays, dramatic works, children's literature, translations, songs, and even liner notes written for musical recordings by activist and folk artist Joan Baez. Ostrom also covers relevant themes and topics important to Hughes's work, and includes biographical entries on Hughes's key contemporaries. Reviewer Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, writing in the African American Review, noted that "Ostrom has undertaken a noble effort" but remarked on a number of inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the encyclopedia, including bibliographical errors, omissions of information on important works and characters, and some factual mistakes. However, Harper noted, "In a volume of nearly 500 pages, the nature and specifics of the inconsistencies, oversights, and errors documented here are certainly far outnumbered by the accurate entries, and the enormous scope of this venture represents an appreciable volume of work." Vega Garcia concluded that A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia is "a carefully prepared, invaluable aid" and "thoroughly enjoyable reading."

Hans Ostrom told CA: "I grew up in Sierra City, a town of two hundred people in California's High Sierra. At the University of California, Davis, I studied with Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Karl Shapiro. One of my interests is depicting the experience of rural, working-class Americans."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, spring, 2003, Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, review of A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia, pp. 162-165.

Choice, December, 1993, review of Langston Hughes:A Study of the Short Fiction, p. 605; October, 2002, S. A. Vega Garcia, review of A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia, p. 257.