Evarts, Hal George, 1915-

Hal Evarts, Jr. was born in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1915 and educated at Stanford University. He is the son of Hal G. Evarts (b. 1887) who was a best-selling author of western fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1936-1937 Evarts took a knapsack trip around the world. He began a writing career as a screenwriter and newspaperman, but later concentrated on fiction, mainly westerns and adventure stories.

Hal George Evarts, Jr. was born on February 8, 1915 in Huchinson, Kansas. His father was the author Hal George Evarts. He attended Stanford University in 1932 and received his Bachelor of Arts. Evarts married Dorothea Van Dusen Abbott in 1942 and had three children. He was a member of the Western Writers of America from 1959 to 1960, serving as both a member and a vice-president. He was also affiliated with Zeta Psi and Sigma Delta Chi. In 1936-1937 he took his version of the "Grand Tour"--a knapsack trip around the world. Among his papers is a four volume diary of that trip, from Paris to central China. Evarts served in the U.S. Army during World War II from 1943 to 1945 in Europe with the 89th Infantry division. Evarts died August 26, 1989 at the age of 74.

Evarts worked as a writer from 1940 until his death in 1989. In that time he worked briefly as a screenwriter in Hollywood, a trade journal and newspaper reporter, as well as for the New York Herald Tribune Paris edition in 1939. Evarts was a mainstream western pulp writer. He composed over one hundred short stories to magazines and newspapers as well as numerous individual novels.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.