Udall, Brady 1957-

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UDALL, Brady 1957-

PERSONAL: Born 1957, in AZ; married; wife's name Kate; children: Finn, one other son. Education: Graduate of University of Iowa's Writers Workshop.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-1102. Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Department of English, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, lecturer, 1998—.

AWARDS, HONORS: James Michener fellow; winner, Playboy fiction contest, 1994.

WRITINGS:

Letting Loose the Hounds (short stories), W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1997.

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals, including Gentlemen's Quarterly, Story, Paris Review, and Midwesterner.

ADAPTATIONS: The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint has been optioned for a movie production by Cell Pictures.

SIDELIGHTS: Brady Udall has won critical acclaim for his first book, a collection of eleven stories titled Letting Loose the Hounds. A native of Arizona, Udall attended the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop before moving to Idaho and settling into a writing career. Set in small towns in Utah and Arizona—Udall's own former stomping grounds—the stories in Letting Loose the Hounds feature folks who suffer from broken marriages, jobs they hate, and unfulfilled dreams. In one story, an Apache Indian remarks that the only thing his heritage brought him was a scholarship to UCLA and suspicious looks from convenience store clerks. In another, a man suffers a nervous breakdown after he handcuffs a ball and chain to the ankle of his best friend who later drives into a reservoir, but cannot swim to safety because of the extra weight. Boston Book Review critic Michael A. Elliot considered "Junk Court," which depicts a emotionally crippled handyman who cannot admit his feelings to the woman he loves, the "most subtle and deft of the stories."

In addition to expressing positive feelings regarding his fictional themes, critics have praised Udall's writing style. Elliot, for one, admired Udall's knack "for describing people for whom the small cruelties of everyday life pose great obstacles," and wrote that "Udall's richest characters are men who struggle to come to terms with what it means to be masculine in a society in which the rules always seem to be beyond their grasp." However pathetic the situations in which the characters find themselves, Udall manages to portray them "without a hint of condescension or pity," asserted Elliot.

Udall's first novel, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint is the story of a man who was run over by a mailman at the age of seven. Half Navaho and half white, Edgar attempts to find the man who injured him and offer forgiveness. Debbie Bogenschutz, writing in Library Journal, called the book "an engaging, well-told story that will appeal to fans of Western fiction and the quirky picaresque." Booklist contributor Peggy Barber called Udall's tale, "cruel, kind, and well worth reading."