Occupation Journalist Role Writer Name Stephen Harrigan | Genre Novelist, screenwriter Nationality American Notable awards Spur Award | |
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Books The Gates of the Alamo, Remember Ben Clayton: A Novel Awards Spur Award for Best Novel of the West Nominations Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Long Form - Television Movies Cleopatra, King of Texas, Murder on the Orient Express, Take Me Home: The John Den, A Wing and a Prayer Similar People Franc Roddam, Margaret George, Carl Schenkel, Jerry London, Dyson Lovell | ||
An Interview with Stephen Harrigan - The Chez Zee Author Series with Cari Clark
Stephen Harrigan is an American writer, known primarily for his 2000 historical novel The Gates of the Alamo.
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Life
He was born in Oklahoma City in 1948, grew up in Texas (in Abilene and Corpus Christi) and currently lives in Austin. Harrigan began his career as a journalist, as a staff writer and later senior editor at Texas Monthly magazine. The Gates of the Alamo was a New York Times bestseller and the recipient of several awards, including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Harrigan has written four other novels and three books of non-fiction. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Thomas Mallon called Harrigan's novel Challenger Park (published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2006), “a fine, absorbing achievement, probably the best science-factual novel about the space-faring worlds of Houston and Cape Canaveral in the nearly half-century since the first astronauts were chosen.” Harrigan's most recent work, "A Friend of Mr. Lincoln - A Novel" was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2016.
Stephen Harrigan has also been a prolific screenwriter, principally in the field of made-for-television movies. Among the films he has written are The Last of His Tribe (HBO), Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (CBS), King of Texas (TNT) and The Colt (The Hallmark Channel.) More recently he worked with Robert Altman on a feature version of S. R. Bindler’s documentary, Hands on a Hard Body, about an endurance contest to win a pickup truck. Altman was in pre-production on the movie at the time of his death in November 2006.