From The Writer's Almanac:
Today is the birthday of novelist Jim Harrison (books by this author), born in Grayling, Michigan (1937). He was a big reader as a kid, but he was more interested in religion and spirituality than he was in writing. That all changed dramatically when he was a teenager. "Up to sixteen I wanted to be a preacher, and then one day I did a whirlwind: I jumped from Jesus to John Keats in three days," he later said.
He started out as a poet, and published his first book, Plain Song, in 1965. A few more poetry books followed; then, in 1970, he was hunting and he hurt his back so badly that he had to stay in bed for months. His friend Thomas McGuane told him he should try writing a novel, so he did, and it was Wolf: A False Memoir (1971). Legends of the Fall (1979), a collection of three novellas, was his first major success, and though he's written several more novels, he still considers himself a poet first.
He published two books last year (2011): The Great Leader (a novel), and Songs of Unreason (a book of poems).
