Background
Frank Conroy was born on January 15, 1936 in New York, New York to an American father and a Danish mother.
novelist university professor writer
Frank Conroy was born on January 15, 1936 in New York, New York to an American father and a Danish mother.
Conroy graduated from Haverford College, and was director of the influential Iowa Writers" Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, from 1987 until 2005, where he was also F. Wendell Miller Professor.
He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time. Published in 1967, this ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world. The book was nominated for the National Book Award.
He was previously the director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982 to 1987.
His book Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now includes articles that describe jamming with Charles Mingus and with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. The latter session occurred when Conroy was writing about the Rolling Stones for Esquire.
Conroy had arrived at a mansion for the interview, found nobody there, and eventually sat down at a grand piano and began to play. They turned out to be Watts and Wyman, whom Conroy did not recognize until they introduced themselves after the session.
Conroy died of colon cancer on April 6, 2005, in Iowa City, Iowa, at the age of 69.
The Frank Conroy Reading Room in the Dey House, the home of the Iowa Writers" Workshop, was named in his honor. Conroy is the subject of Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes, his former student at the Iowa Writers Workshop and long-time friend.