Occupation Novelist Education Duke University Role Author | Name Bruce Coville Nationality United States | |
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Born May 16, 1950 (age 74)
Syracuse, New York, United States ( 1950-05-16 ) Genre Young adult fantasy and science fiction Awards Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award, Edward E. Smith Memorial Award Nominations Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature, Gemini Award for Best Children's or Youth Program or Series Books Jeremy Thatcher - Dragon H, The Monster's Ring, Into the Land of the Unicorns, Aliens Ate My Homework, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad Similar People Paula Danziger, Jane Yolen, Elizabeth Levy, James D Macdonald, Sherwood Smith | ||
Bruce coville
Bruce Farrington Coville (, born May 16, 1950) is an author of young adult fiction. Enraptured with reading novels at a young age, Coville was first published in 1977 and has over 100 books in his repertoire.
Contents
- Bruce coville
- Noted children s author bruce coville tells interviewer tim podell what it was like to dig graves
- Biography
- Literature
- Awards
- References
Noted children s author bruce coville tells interviewer tim podell what it was like to dig graves
Biography
Coville was born on May 16, 1950 in Syracuse, New York, where he resides to this day. Bruce Coville's father (born Arthur Farrington) was adopted by his aunt, where he adopted her surname of Coville. Growing up in what he called "farm country", Coville realized his bisexuality in his teens. While waiting to publish his first novel, Coville was employed in a number of professions including toymaker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, assembly line worker, and elementary school teacher working with second and fourth graders. Coville is wed to Katherine née Dietz (married when Coville was nineteen), and the two of them have three children: "a son, Orion, born in 1970; a daughter, Cara, born in 1975; and another son, Adam, born in 1981."
Literature
Coville began his love of books as a child, reading "Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and zillions of comic books". He read "books that made [him] laugh, but also made [him] shiver in terror." Wanting to impart those sorts of feeling to others is what spurred his love of writing. Coville knew he wanted to be a writer by his mid-teens, and by age 19 he "never looked back." His first novel, The Foolish Giant, was published in 1977.
With no set paradigm for writing, Coville has successfully tried everything from writing from a strict outline to "writing from the seat of my pants." As of 2015, he uses what he calls an "ever-expanding outline" where he outlines the beginning and end of a novel, and works to fill in the middle later.
Coville has written over 100 books for young adults, with translations in over a dozen languages. He has said that even with over 100 books under his belt, it gets harder and harder to write each successive book; he's concerned with living up to the work already written as well as not repeating himself.
Coville is also the co-founder of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company devoted to recording full-cast, unabridged copies of young adult fiction.
Awards
In 2012, Coville was the 23rd recipient of the "Empire State Award for Excellence in Literature for Young People" as awarded by the New York Library Association.