Background
Olmstead was born in 1954 in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. He grew up on a farm.
Olmstead was born in 1954 in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. He grew up on a farm.
He later attended Syracuse University, where he studied with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff and received both bachelor"s and master"s degrees, in 1977 and 1983, respectively. Olmstead teaches in the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Converse College <www.converse.edu/mfa>.
After high school, he enrolled at Davidson College with a football scholarship, but left school after three semesters in which he compiled a poor academic record. He is currently the Director of Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University. He has also served as the Senior Writer in Residence at Dickinson College and as the director of creative writing at Boise State University.
Olmstead is the author of the novels America by Land, A Trail of Heart"s Blood Wherever We Go and Soft Water.
He is also the author of a memoir Stay Here With Maine, as well as River Dogs, a collection of short stories, and the textbook Elements of the Writing Craft. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 and an National Education Association Literature Fellowship in 1993.
One reviewer praised Olmstead"s ability to "translate nature"s revelatory beauty into words", commenting that Coal Black Horse evokes what Henry David Thoreau described in Walden as "the indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature". By contrast, the Mexican desert of Far Bright Star is "the place of the sun shriveled and the dried up".
The Chicago Tribune review praised the authenticity of the imagery and experiences in Olmstead"s writing, while also comparing his writing to that of Ernest Hemingway.
lieutenant noted the influence of contemporary events, such as the guerrilla warfare during the United States. occupation of Fallujah during the Iraq War.