Douglas Thayer, Date of Birth, Date of Death

Douglas Thayer

American writer

Date of Birth: 19-Apr-1929

Date of Death: 17-Oct-2017

Profession: novelist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Douglas H.
Thayer (April 19, 1929 – October 17, 2017) was a prominent author in the "faithful realism" movement of Mormon fiction.
He has been called the "Mormon Hemingway" for his straightforward style and powerful prose.
Eugene England called him the "father of contemporary Mormon fiction."Thayer grew up in Provo, Utah, and dropped out of high school to join the army in 1946.
He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Germany.
He studied at Brigham Young University (BYU) for a bachelor's degree in English and received a Master's in American literature from Stanford.
He also received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa.
He taught fiction writing at BYU for fifty-four years and retired in 2011. In the 1960s, Thayer started to publish short stories in BYU Studies and Dialogue.
His first novel, Summer Fire, was published in 1983.
Critics with the Mormon fiction movement praise Thayer's literary coming-of-age stories and their exploration of the Mormon masculine psyche.
His work has received multiple awards from the Association of Mormon Letters (AML) and other organizations, and he received lifetime achievement awards from AML and the Whitney Awards.
He was an active LDS church member his whole life, and had six children with his wife Donlu.