Masters, Hilary

American author and professor.

Hilary Masters (1928-), author and lecturer, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to writer Edgar Lee Masters and his wife, Ellen (Coyne) Masters. Masters attended Davidson college from 1944-1946. He interrupted his education to serve as a naval correspondent from 1946-1947, and then graduated from Brown University in 1952.

Masters has had a varied literary career. He began a career as a theatrical agent in New York from 1953-1956 and later was a newspaper editor and publisher for the Hyde Park Record from 1956-1959. During the 1970s and 1980s, Masters was a visiting scholar at such institutions as Drake University (1975-1977), Clark University (1978), Ohio University (1979), and also served as a Fulbright lecturer in Finland (1983) and at Carnegie-Mellon University (1983-1985).

In addition to these pursuits, Masters has written several novels, including The Common Pasture (1967), An American Marriage (1969), Palace of Strangers (1971), as well as Last Stands: Notes from Memory, a 1982 autobiographical account of his family history. Masters' short fiction has been published in a variety of journals, including Greensboro Review, Massachusetts Review, Ohio Review, and Sports Illustrated.

Hilary Masters is a member of the Authors Guild, the Author's League of America, and the Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists.