Background
Jean Rikhoff was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana.
("A completely mature and satisfying novel masterful in it...)
"A completely mature and satisfying novel masterful in its handling of complex material one reads it with fascination Miss Rikhoff takes us into the mind of each of the principal characters, and each is fully developed and completely credible."Granville Hicks, Saturday Review
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670260983/?tag=2022091-20
(One of the Raymonds is part of "a hearty series, a family...)
One of the Raymonds is part of "a hearty series, a family chronicle that started with Buttes Landing. It is a long and satisfying novel, but it's more than that-very well written, bordering on the edges of sentimentality, the story and the characters somehow get hold of even the most unsentimental reader and bring genuine quickening to the pulse." -Publishers Weekly
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803766742/?tag=2022091-20
( Author Jean Rikhoff’s life often reads as if it were fi...)
Author Jean Rikhoff’s life often reads as if it were fiction instead of an actual catalog of facts. She’s had no interest in settling down into what would be described as a normal life. In this memoir, she recaps her life’s out-of-the ordinary adventures against the backdrop of water, earth, fire, and air. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water is Rickhoff’s account of growing up in the 1950s. She tells about trying many roles, such as writer, wife, mother, professor, friend, with her real role in life always seeming to evade her. Her adventures include several years spent in Europe and numerous visits to Africa and India as well as remote locations such as Cambodia and the Easter Islands. Among her many experiences are a doomed love affair with a Spanish count, an extraordinary encounter with a Masai chieftain in Kenya, and an intense and humorous friendship with the famous American sculptor David Smith. With anecdotes and photographs, this memoir shows that through all of Rikhoff’s many exploits, she is searching for who she is—not an appendage to someone else, but as a woman who wants to carve out a life that is uniquely her own. Best Memoir of 2011 from the Adirondack Center for Writing
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1462009360/?tag=2022091-20
Jean Rikhoff was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana.
She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Mount Holyoke College and completed graduate work in English and philosophy at Wesleyan University.
She is best known for two trilogies that she wrote: the Timble Trilogy, made up of Dear Ones All, Voyage In, Voyage Out, and Rites of Passage, and the trilogy of the North Country, consisting of Buttes Landing, One of the Raymonds, and The Sweetwater. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, a Eugene Saxton fellowship in creative writing (1958), and two State University of New York creative writing fellowships. Her dissertation was on The Classical Imagery in Christopher Marlowe"s Plays.
During this time she wrote her first novel, Dear Ones All, in Seville.
In 1954 she established Quixote, a literary magazine, which she also edited. Rikhoff described the magazine as a financial failure, yet continued to publish until 1966.
In Quixote she wrote an annual report called "Troubles of a Small Magazine". The collected reports were published by Grosset & Dunlap as the Quixote Anthology, along with selected works from the magazine.
In the meantime, she had started to work with literary agent Barthold Fles, who was of great support to her creative writing.
Rikhoff remarried and spent 20 years on a horse farm in West Hebron, where she wrote some of her best known books In 1983 she co-founded the Loft Press in Glens Falls, for which she served as publisher and editor of the Glens Falls Review. She also worked as an editorial assistant for Gourmet Magazine.
Rikhoff took up teaching again, now at the State University of New York"s Adirondack Community College.
Among others, she served as faculty advisor to Expressions, the literary magazine of the Adirondack students. At the time of her retirement she was the chair of the English Department at Adirondack College.
("A completely mature and satisfying novel masterful in it...)
(One of the Raymonds is part of "a hearty series, a family...)
( Author Jean Rikhoff’s life often reads as if it were fi...)
(the quixote anthology)