Stegner, Page 1937–

PERSONAL: Born January 31, 1937, in Salt Lake City, UT; son of Wallace (a novelist and critic) and Mary (Page) Stegner; married Marion Mackenzie, June 20, 1959 (marriage ended); married second wife, Lynn (a writer and professor), July 19, 1986; children: (first marriage) Wallace Page, Rachel; (second marriage) Mary Allison. Education: Stanford University, A.B., M.A., Ph.D., 1965.

ADDRESSES: Home—Shelburne, VT. Agent—c/o The Free Press Publicity Department, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, assistant professor of English, 1965–67; University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, professor of American literature and director of the creative writing program, 1967–95, professor emeritus, 1995–. Peace Corps, associate director in Ecuador, 1970–72.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1979; National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1980; Guggenheim fellow, 1981.

WRITINGS:

Escape into Aesthetics: The Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Dial (New York, NY), 1966.

The Edge (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 1968.

(Compiler and author of introduction) Nabokov's Congeries, Viking (New York, NY), 1968.

(Editor) The Portable Nabokov, Viking (New York, NY), 1969.

(Editor) Introduction to Fiction, Scott, Foresman (Glenview, IL), 1969.

Hawks and Harriers (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 1971.

Sportscar Menopause, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1978.

(With Eliot Porter and father, Wallace Stegner) American Places, edited by John Macrae III, Dutton (New York, NY), 1981.

(Author of text) Islands of the West: From Baja to Vancouver, Sierra Club Books (San Francisco, CA), 1985.

Outposts of Eden: A Curmudgeon at Large in the American West, Sierra Club Books (San Francisco, CA), 1989.

Grand Canyon: The Great Abyss, HarperCollins West (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(Editor, with Mary Stegner) The Geography of Hope: A Tribute to Wallace Stegner, Sierra Club Books (San Francisco, CA), 1996.

(Editor) Call of the River: Writings and Photographs, Harcourt Brace (San Diego, CA), 1996.

(Editor and author of introduction) Marking the Sparrow's Fall: Wallace Stegner's American West, Holt (New York, NY), 1998.

Winning the Wild West: The Epic Saga of the American Frontier, 1800–1899, foreword by Larry McMurtry, Tehabi Books (San Diego, CA)/Free Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, Atlantic, Esquire, Audubon, Outside, New York Review of Books, and Arizona Highways.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel titled Confessions of an Onanist; a collection of stories titled California of the Mind; a biography of Robinson Jeffers.

SIDELIGHTS: In their book American Places, Page Stegner and his father, Wallace, together with photographer Eliot Porter, present a panorama of American locales. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Edmund Fuller called it a "coffee-table book as much above the general run as the talents that produced it," while Los Angeles Times Book Review critic Richard G. Lillard praised its "charm, humanistic vision and continental sweep." Because their plan is to deal with local people in their own regions, the Stegners avoid big cities, and the limited scope of their book leads them to sidestep the South as well. Nonetheless, Lillard observed that "their chapters are rich in examples of American life—of individuals and of the settings they have adjusted to—or altered." Believing that environment is "as much the ambiance created by a community of human beings as it is the flora and fauna, the topography and climate," the Stegners focus on the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. "It is," concluded Lillard, "their great theme, just as it is a basic theme of today's environmental movement and of all American history."

Following American Places, Stegner published Islands of the West: From Baja to Vancouver, which was described by David Lancashire in the Smithsonian as a "beautifully produced portrait of the offshore territories." Later, he continued his tour of American places as editor of Call of the River: Writings and Photographs, a collection of river-inspired works by various authors, including Wendell Berry, Gretel Ehrlich, and Kathleen Moore. According to Gilbert Taylor in Booklist: "This set of writings captures the power of rivers to rejuvenate our wonder in wildness."

In 1998 Stegner edited a volume of his father's writings titled Marking the Sparrow's Fall: Wallace Stegner's American West. According to Katherine K. Koenig in the Library Journal, Wallace Stegner's works "helped shaped the literature of the American West." Following in his father's footsteps, the younger Stegner later published his own survey of the Old West, Winning the Wild West: The Epic Saga of the American Frontier, 1800–1899. This book is "a well-rounded, entertaining, and educational survey," according to Charles V. Cowling in the Library Journal, adding: "Stegner's book is hard to beat." Writing for Booklist, Jay Freeman remarked that Stegner's best work appears when he is discussing "the sense of adventure, optimism, and innovation" of the Old West.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, spring, 1999, Andrew Wingfield, review of Marking the Sparrow's Fall: Wallace Stegner's American West, p. 245.

Booklist, June 1, 1996, Mary Carroll, review of The Geography of Hope: A Tribute to Wallace Stegner, p. 1666; July, 1996, Gilbert Taylor, review of Call of the River: Writings and Photographs, p. 1788; September 1, 2002, Jay Freeman, review of Winning the Wild West: The Epic Saga of the American Frontier, 1800–1899, p. 52.

Commonweal, February 12, 1999, Chris Anderson, review of Marking the Sparrow's Fall, p. 25.

Library Journal, February 1, 1982, review of American Places, p. 253; August, 1998, Katherine K. Koenig, review of Marking the Sparrow's Fall, p. 90; September 15, 2002, Charles V. Cowling, review of Winning the Wild West, p. 77.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 1, 1981, Richard G. Lillard, review of American Places, p. M8.

National Geographic Review, October, 2002, review of Winning the Wild West, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, June 29, 1998, review of Marking the Sparrow's Fall, p. 41.

Smithsonian, June, 1986, David Lancashire, review of Islands of the West: From Baja to Vancouver, p. 137.

Wall Street Journal, December 7, 1981, Edmund Fuller, review of American Places, p. 26.

ONLINE

USA Today Online, http://www.usatoday.com/ (December 6, 2002), Deirdre Donahue, "Savor this Rich Brew of Coffee-Table Tomes," review of Winning the Wild West.