TROUT, Steven 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born August 16, 1963, in Kansas City, MO; son of Conrad N. (a teacher) and Lois Jean (a homemaker; maiden name, Walker) Trout; married Maniphone Sengsamouth (a pharmacist), August 5, 1989; children: Madeline, Natalie. Education: Longview Community College, A.A., 1983; University of Missouri—Kansas City, B.A., 1985, M.A., 1987; University of Kansas, Ph.D. (with honors), 1993. Politics: Democrat. Religion: "Agnostic." Hobbies and other interests: Collecting books.

ADDRESSES:

Home—321 West 32nd St., Hays, KS 67601. Office—Department of English, Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS 67601-4099. E-mail—strout@fhsu.edu.

CAREER:

Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS, professor of English, 1993—. Center for Great Plains Research, associate fellow; Shenandoah University, Willa Cather Institute Lecturer, 2004; guest speaker at other institutions, including University of Northampton, U.S. Air Force Academy, Kansas Newman College, University of Nevada—Reno, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, St. John's College, Oxford, Hamline University, and University of Nebraska—Lincoln. Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Foundation, member. Hays Area Children's Center, board member, 1999-2003; University Press of Kansas, member of advisory board, 2000-02.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, Willa Cather Society, Hemingway Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Kappel Prize for Literary Criticism, Twentieth Century Literature, 1997, for "Miniaturization and Anticlimax in Evelyn Waugh's 'Sword of Honour'"; President's Distinguished Scholar Award, Fort Hays State University, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Patrick J. Quinn) The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2001.

Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First World War, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.

American Prose Writers of the First World War: An Illustrated Chronicle, Bruccoli Clark Layman (Detroit, MI), 2005.

(Editor and contributor) Cather Studies 7: Willa Cather and War, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), in press.

Author of introduction, Toward the Flame: A Memoir of World War I, by Hervey Allen, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2003; contributor to other books, including Recharting the Thirties: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Patrick J. Quinn, Susquehanna University Press (Selinsgrove, PA), 1996; Willa Cather Studies 6: Willa Cather as Literary Icon, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2004; and Hemingway and War, edited by James Meredith and Bickford Sylvester, Kent State University Press (Kent, OH), in press. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Hemingway Review, Studies in Short Fiction, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, War, Literature, and the Arts, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and American Literary Realism. Production editor, Precursors and Aftermaths: Literature in English, 1914-1945; advisory editor, Gravesiana: Journal of the Robert Graves Society and Evelyn Waugh Society Newsletter and Review.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

"It Was like This:" The First World War in American Fiction and Autobiography, completion expected c. 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Steven Trout told CA: "Harold Orel, my mentor at the University of Kansas, taught me how to write by emphasizing the avoidance of jargon and the elimination of 'bullying language' (phrases such as 'of course' or 'one can clearly see'). Whatever I have achieved as a writer and scholar, I owe to him."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, spring, 2003, Roger Luckhurst, review of The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory, p. 191.

Great Plains Quarterly, winter, 2004, Mary R. Ryder, review of Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First World War, pp. 60-61.

Modern Fiction Studies, June, 2004, Joseph R. Urgo, review of Memorial Fictions.

South Carolina Review, spring, 2004, Janis P. Stout, review of Memorial Fictions.