 James Lee Burke Photographed by Robert Clark |
James Lee Burke was born in 1936 in Houston, Texas,
and grew up on the Louisiana-Texas coast. He attended Southwestern
Louisiana Institute (now called the University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
and later the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he received
an A.B. and M.A. in English Literature.
Over the years he worked as a pipeliner in Texas, land surveyor in Colorado, social worker in California, newspaper reporter in Louisiana, and U.S. Forest Service employee in eastern Kentucky. He also taught at the University of Missouri, University of Southwestern Louisiana, The University of Montana, Miami-Dade Community College, and Wichita State University. He published his first short story in 1956 and wrote his first published novel, Half of Paradise, between the ages of 20 and 23. Over the years he has published twenty-one novels and one collection of short stories. The stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, New Stories From The South, The Southern Review, Antioch Review, and Kenyon Review. His novels Heaven's Prisoners and Two for Texas were adapted as motion pictures. Mr. Burke also managed to go thirteen years during the middle of his career without publishing a novel in hardback. During that period his novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie received over 100 editorial rejections. Later, after it was published with Louisiana State University Press, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Burke's work has received two Edgar Awards for best crime novel of the year. He is also a Breadloaf Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow and has been a recipient of an NEA grant. He and his wife of 44 years, Pearl Burke, who is originally from mainland China, have four children and divide their time between Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. |
Last Updated: 26 April 2005.