Hearon, Shelby, 1931-

American writer.

Novelist Shelby Hearon received an Ingram Merrill grant in 1987, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1983, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Fiction in 1982. Hearon won the Texas Institute of Letters Fiction award in 1973 for The Second Dance and in 1978 for A Prince of a Fellow. She has been a five-time recipient of the NEA/PEN syndication Short Story Prize. In addition to writing novels, Hearon lectures, teaches writing, and contributes articles to national publications.

Shelby Reed was born in 1931 in Marion, Kentucky, and raised in Kentucky and Texas. She displayed an early talent for writing, winning first place in the Texas Interscholastic League ready-writing contest her senior year in high school. After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin in 1953, she married attorney Robert Hearon and turned to raising a family. She was active in the Austin community, serving as president of the PTA, Junior League of Austin, and Planned Parenthood.

In 1962, Hearon began writing fiction, feeling that she had no work that grew out of my own personal identity. After five years of rewriting and revision, she sent her first completed novel, Armadillo in the Grass, over the transom to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., where it was discovered by editor Judith Jones and published in 1968. The story of artist Clara Blue and her emerging artistic sensibility won immediate acclaim. Since then, Hearon has published thirteen novels, a biography of Barbara Jordan, and numerous short stories and articles for magazines, newspapers, and journals, such as Redbook, McCall's, Cosmopolitan, The Writer, Dallas Morning News, Harper's Bazaar, Texas Monthly, Readers Digest, GQ, Family Circle, Southwest Review, and Mississippi Review . After publishing books with Doubleday and Atheneum, Hearon returned to Knopf in 1989 with the publication of Owning Jolene .

Hearon's writing focuses on women, often from an upper middle-class background, who are searching for their own identity and voice. Most of her novels have some connection to Texas. The ties of family and friends, a focus on appearance versus reality, and an interest in science further enhance Hearon's plots. A meticulous writer, Hearon researches her topics thoroughly and makes considerable revisions before submitting a finished manuscript.

Hearon's skill as a writer has been recognized with awards, grants, and teaching opportunities. She is a five-time recipient of the NEA/PEN Syndication short story prize, and has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters fiction prize. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction in 1982, a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in 1983, an Ingram Merrill grant in 1987, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters fiction award in 1990 for Owning Jolene. She won the New York Women in Communications Award in 1984. She has taught at a number of colleges, including Bennington College, the University of Houston, the University of California at Irvine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Colgate University, and the University of Miami. She has served on the Texas Commission on the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Hearon currently lives in Burlington, Vermont, with her husband, cardiovascular physiologist, William Halpern. She is the mother of Reed Hearon, a chef, and Dr. Anne Rambo, a family therapist.