Background
Caldwell, Gail was born on January 20, 1951 in Amarillo, Texas, United States. Daughter of Bill M. and Ruby Caldwell.
(In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plain...)
In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plains of Texas, Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place. A Strong West Wind begins in the 1950s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandle–a place of both boredom and beauty, its flat horizons broken only by oil derricks, grain elevators, and church steeples. Its story belongs to a girl who grew up surrounded by dust storms and cattle ranches and summer lightning, who took refuge from the vastness of the land and the ever-present wind by retreating into books. What she found there, from renegade women to men who lit out for the territory, turned out to offer a blueprint for her own future. Caldwell would grow up to become a writer, but first she would have to fall in love with a man who was every mother’s nightmare, live through the anguish and fire of the Vietnam years, and defy the father she adored, who had served as a master sergeant in the Second World War. A Strong West Wind is a memoir of culture and history–of fathers and daughters, of two world wars and the passionate rebellions of the sixties. But it is also about the mythology of place and the evolution of a sensibility: about how literature can shape and even anticipate a life. Caldwell possesses the extraordinary ability to illuminate the desires, stories, and lives of ordinary people. Written with humanity, urgency, and beautiful restraint, A Strong West Wind is a magical and unforgettable book, destined to become an American classic. From the Hardcover edition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812972562/?tag=2022091-20
Caldwell, Gail was born on January 20, 1951 in Amarillo, Texas, United States. Daughter of Bill M. and Ruby Caldwell.
Bachelor, University Texas, Austin, 1978. Master of Arts in American Studies, University Texas, Austin, 1980.
The award was for eight Sunday reviews and two other columns written in 2000. According to the Pulitzer Prize board, those columns were noted for “her insightful observations on contemporary life and literature.”
Caldwell was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. After graduating from Tascosa High School, she attended Texas Technical University for a while but transferred to University of Texas at Austin and obtained two degrees in American studies.
She was an instructor at the University of Texas until 1981.
Before joining The Boston Globe, Caldwell taught feature writing at Boston University, worked as the arts editor of the Boston Review and wrote for the publications New England Monthly and Village Voice. Caldwell published a third memoir in 2014, New Life, Number Instructions (), about her childhood bout with polio.
She has a Samoyed named Tula.
(In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plain...)
Member of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association New England (board directors), National Book Critics Circuit.