Shelby Hearon was born January 18, 1931 in Kentucky. After earning a BA in 1953 from the University of Texas at Austin, she settled down to marriage and family. She began her first novel Armadillo in the Grass in 1962 and after many stops and rewrites, submitted it to Knopf in 1967. Knopf accepted the novice's manuscript "over the transom" and Hearon's career as a writer was launched.
Hearon has written 13 novels through 1995. She 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 Dune 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.
From the guide to the Shelby Hearon Papers, 1983-1992, (Southwestern Writers Collection, Special Collections, Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos)
