Stephen Harrigan

Stephen Harrigan is an American author of novels, nonfiction, and film. Heralded for his vivid storytelling, Harrigan has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award and the Lannan Literary Award.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1948, Harrigan grew up in rural Texas and was the middle child of five. His father was a well-respected rancher and geologist, while his mother was a teacher. Harrigan’s exposure to literature began in grade school, when his father introduced him to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island.

His love of literature carried over into his college years, when he won the William Randolph Hearst Creative Writing Award while attending the University of Texas at Austin. After college, Harrigan moved to New York City, working as a copy editor at Harper & Row before settling in Austin and teaching at the University of Texas.

Harrigan’s first novel, The Gates of the Alamo, was published in 1987. The book was an instant bestseller, winning the Texas Institute of Letters' Carr P Collier Fiction Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the Western States Letters Award.

The success of The Gates of the Alamo led to multiple sequels, including Remember Ben Clayton and Jacob’s Well. Over time, Harrigan developed a reputation for writing historical novels which featured inspiring characters and vivid descriptions of forgotten stories from American history.

His first work of nonfiction, A Natural State, was published in 1994. The book put a spotlight on the natural beauty of Texas, leading to a Merit Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 2000, Harrigan published his most acclaimed novel, An eternal Spring. Part love story and part historical epic, it tells the story of two families during the Civil War era. The book was called “one of the great Texas novels of all time” by famed scholar and writer Larry McMurtry, and won both the National Book Award and the Lannan Literary Award.

Other novels by Harrigan include Comanche scale, Challenge the wind, The demon’s passing, and Thesinger & the Saints.

Harrigan’s work has been adapted for film multiple times, beginning with Comanche Scale in 1998. His novel Jacob’s Well was turned into an IMAX documentary in 2001. In 2008, CBS adapted A Natural State into a miniseries starring Sam Shepard and Tommy Lee Jones.

Stephen Harrigan has been lauded for his vivid storytelling of forgotten stories in American history, earning numerous awards both for his fiction and nonfiction. His novels are timeless stories of love and tragedy, giving readers an inside look at what life was once like in the Old West.