Dowell, Coleman

Bradford Morrow is an American novelist, essayist, poet, editor, and writer of short fiction. He was born on April 8, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Littleton, Colorado. In 1968 he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his senior year of high school as a foreign exchange student at the Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1972 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude) from the University of Colorado, Boulder. After doing graduate work in English and comparative literature at Yale University, he began work on a bibliography of the works of Wyndham Lewis, which was published in 1978 by Black Sparrow Press.

Morrow is the founding editor of the literary journal Conjunctions . He became the literary executor of the poet Kenneth Rexroth's estate in 1982 and has edited a number of Rexroth’s books, including The Selected Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (1984), Classics Revisited (1986), World Outside the Window: Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth (1987), and More Classics Revisited (1989). With Sam Hamill he coedited The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (2002).

Morrow is the author of six novels: Come Sunday (1988), The Almanac Branch (1991), which was a finalist for the 1992 PEN/Faulkner Award; Trinity Fields (1994), a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award; Giovanni’s Gift (1997), Ariel’s Crossing (2002), and The Diviner’s Tale (2011). He also wrote two books for children: A Bestiary (1991), illustrated by Gahan Wilson, and Didn’t Didn’t Do It (2006).

Morrow’s short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies. A collection of his short stories, The Uninnocent, was published in 2011. He also co-edited two anthologies: The New Gothic (1991), and The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death (2011).

Morrow has written a number of poetry collections, including Passing from the Provinces (1981), Posthumes (1982), Danae’s Progress (1982), The Preferences (1983) and After a Charme (1984).

Morrow was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa while at the University of Colorado. He was awarded a Danforth Fellowship to do graduate work at Yale. His professional honors include the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (CCLM) Editor's award in 1984 and 1988, the Pushcart Prize (2002) for the short story "Amazing Grace", the O. Henry Prize (2003) for the short story "Lush", the PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in literary journal editing (2007), and a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction (2007). The Review of Contemporary Fiction published a “Bradford Morrow issue” in 2000.

Before he began his writing and academic career, Morrow worked as a professional jazz musician and music teacher and as a rare book archivist in California and New York. Morrow has taught at Princeton, Columbia and Brown Universities. In 1990 he joined the faculty of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he is currently a Professor of Literature and a Bard Center Fellow. He is a member of the PEN American Center, where he was a member of the board of trustees from 1998-2002; the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (formerly the CCLM), where he has served on the advisory board since 1986; and the New Writing Foundation.

From the guide to the Bradford Morrow papers, Morrow (Bradford) papers, (bulk 1973-2001), 1912-2001, (John Hay Library Special Collections)